Blazers bag a big win, but this game was about Dame

Damian Lillard flashes “love” to Blazer fans as they hail him with a long-standing ovation during pregame introductions Wednesday night (courtesy Bruce Ely/Trail Blazers)

In an NBA regular season, every team plays 82 games. Some of them are big, a few of them really big.

Milwaukee’s Wednesday night visit to face the Trail Blazers was a whopper.

Damian Lillard’s return to Portland for the first time since leaving the Blazers for the Bucks in September was more than a game. It was a civic event, a happening the likes of which Rip City hasn’t experienced, well, ever.

The city’s favorite son got a hero’s welcome, and his homecoming turned out perfectly for most of the sellout Moda Center crowd of 19,335. They paid their respects to greatness, then got to watch a terrific game and, in the end, a Blazer victory on a night that carried playoff-like intensity.

Anfernee Simons’ one-handed floater from 10 feet with 17.6 seconds left was the game-winner as Portland pulled off a 119-116 upset over the Bucks.

Lillard finished the game with 25 points, seven assists and six rebounds — also four turnovers — in 40 minutes, though he had an off shooting night. He made 9 of 23 shots from the field, including only 3 of 13 from 3-point range. And the Bucks (32-16) lost a game they fully expected to win.

“It was a fun game,” said Lillard, looking tired as he spoke with the media afterward. “There was a lot of meaning, a lot of emotion to it. The fans were into the game for a lot of reasons. It was just kind of draining for me because of everything around it.

Lillard says his relationship with the Blazers, their fans and the city of Portland “is never-ending”

“I ain’t going to say I’m happy that it’s over. I really enjoyed being back, but the whole spectacle of it was a little bit draining.”

Simons, the 24-year-old guard who is in his sixth season with the Blazers, is the only current Blazer who spent a significant number of years as a teammate of Lillard’s in Portland. They remain close friends. Simons has inherited Lillard’s role as the Blazers’ go-to guy and leading scorer.

“I’m super tight with Ant,” Lillard said before the game. “I’ve watched his development really closely, and I’ve been a part of it. I’ve trained with him in the summers. Even during this season, we talk all the time. As a brother and a friend of his, I’m rooting for him. I wish for his success. For that reason, if I can’t catch a game, I’ll check the boxscores to see how he’s doing.”

Lillard didn’t need to check Wednesday’s boxscore. He saw things first-hand as Simons put up 24 points with five assists to lift Portland (15-33) past a Milwaukee team that is expected to contend for an NBA championship.

Simons understands the significance of Lillard’s return and the depth of feeling Blazer fans showed Wednesday night in their outpouring of affection to the player who thrilled them for 11 seasons in a Portland uniform.

“The whole night was crazy,” Simons told me before he left the arena. “First time I have ever played against him in a game, and the first time I have seen him play live in another jersey. Coming into Portland and seeing all the love he got? That’s the craziest part.

“But honestly, it wasn’t about Dame. I’m just glad we beat a good team. They’re second in the East. We played well and beat them. The confidence we get from that is going to be good for us.”

Though the Blazers have played well of late, winning five of their last nine games, their chances for a playoff berth are more than a long shot. They stand 8 1/2 games behind 10th-place Utah in the Western Conference standings with 34 games to play. General manager Joe Cronin is happy to see his team play well but is also looking to nail down another high draft pick to help fortify his rebuild of the team. That means there are mixed emotions with every win this season.

So on many levels, despite Simons’ assertion, Wednesday’s game was all about Dame.

What a night it was. Many fans had circled the date on their calendar since Lillard was sent to Milwaukee in late September. Dame’s ex-wife Kay’La, and their three children continue to make Portland home. So, too, do his mother, Gina Johnson, and his brother, Houston Lillard.

Early Tuesday morning, Damian arrived in Portland by private jet from Denver, where the Bucks lost to the Nuggets on Monday night. In the afternoon, he visited the Adidas campus in north Portland, where a basketball court was named in his honor. Lillard enjoyed a belated third birthday celebration with his twins, Kalii and Kali. The next day, he entered the Moda Center as a visitor for the first time.

“I honestly didn’t know where to go,” Lillard said. “I’ve never been in the visitors’ locker room until today. It felt weird to be in Portland and in this building and not be in the home locker room.”

Portland coach Chauncey Billups, who coached Lillard the previous two seasons, used the same adjective before the game.

Coach Chauncey Billups said it was good to have Lillard back in Portland, but that the Blazers’ plan was to “spoil his homecoming”

“I was sitting in my office and he just popped in on me,” Billups said. “We talk all through the season, but it’s good to see him, to hug him, talk to him a little bit. It’s weird game-planning against him, but it’s good to have him here. It’s going to be a special night for the city, the fans, the state.”

Billups had something to add.

“We want to spoil the homecoming,” he said.

The Blazers did with one of their best performances of the season. They shot .533 from the field, including 12 of 28 (.429) from 3-point territory, and had 26 assists to 11 turnovers. It was a seesaw battle with 12 ties and 14 lead changes, and the Bucks had their chances right to the closing seconds, when Brook Lopez misfired on a 3-point attempt with six seconds remaining.

The outcome was almost anticlimactic with the hoopla that surrounded the occasion. Blazer fans welcomed Lillard back with a 30-second standing ovation when the Bucks took the floor for pregame warmups. During introductions, they took it to another level, bringing the house down with an outpouring of noise that lasted more than a minute.

Lillard reacted accordingly. He smiled and waved. He pointed to his wrist, indicating “Dame time.” He gave a double thumbs up, then a heart sign with both hands. At that point, all of his teammates gathered on the floor and surrounded him in a circle. The final three starters didn’t bother to run out when their names were called. Then coach Doc Rivers got heartily booed.

The fans rewarded Lillard with two more standing O’s during the game’s first timeouts — when videos on the Jumbotron featured first his game highlights, then his off-court contributions. Lillard admitted he couldn’t help but notice.

“You feel the appreciation and the love,” he said. “It’s like, ‘Man, this is a big deal.’ To have everybody in the building show me that type of love, acknowledge a lot of things during my time here … I appreciate it.

“The whole game, I was trying not to wipe my sweat, because people would go, ‘He’s crying.’ ”

CJ McCollum called Lillard Wednesday morning. McCollum, who played in the Blazer backcourt with Lillard for 7 1/2 seasons before a trade to New Orleans, received a similar but less dramatic ovation when he returned to Portland with the Pelicans in 2022.

“Embrace it,” McCollum told Lillard. “It’s going to be emotional. We put our time in. We put our work in. We had our moments. It was a lot of years of us giving everything we had, and we were appreciated.”

“When CJ came back, he felt appreciated for everything he had put into it in Portland,” Lillard said. “He said, ‘You’re really going to feel it.’ ”

Rivers, 62, has been through just about it all in his long career as a player and coach. Through 24 years as an NBA head coach, he has won 1,097 regular-season games and an NBA title. But Rivers, who took over as Milwaukee’s head coach last week after Adrian Griffin was fired, is now 0-2 with the Bucks. He didn’t expect Wednesday’s game to be easy. As a coach with Boston and Orlando, he had been through homecomings with Kevin Garnett in Minneapolis and Patrick Ewing in New York.

“These games are tough games,” Rivers said. “I don’t know how many directions Dame went the last 48 hours. Coming home, seeing his kids, getting a court named after him … I would imagine it has been rough. But he weathered it pretty well.”

Before the game, Rivers explained the plan in these type of homecoming games.

“I try to stay out of their way and let them have their day,” he said. “With Dame, you want him to enjoy that moment. I can’t imagine how hard this must be for him to focus.”

Lillard entered the game averaging 25.1 points and 6.8 assists while shooting .422 from the field, .347 from 3-point range and .924 from the foul line for the season. He has been voted in as a starter for the upcoming All-Star game. Still, blending in smoothly with superstar Giannis Antetokoumpo doesn’t happen overnight.

“I want him to get back to being Dame — to just be comfortable every night,” Rivers explained. “Dame has had the ball in his hands for his whole career. He has been able to come down and call whatever he wants and shoot whenever he wants and do whatever he wants in the team mold.

“Now you’re coming to a team where there’s Giannis, there’s (Khris) Middleton — it’s a new crew. It just takes time. The first thing I told Dame was, ‘You don’t need to fit in. We’ll fit in around you.’ Great players don’t need to fit in. We’ll figure it out.”

Lillard admits it has not been easy to be living away from his family.

“I’ve always had my support system right by me,” he said. “This is the first time I haven’t had that for helping me function day to day. That’s a huge part of how I am able to do my job. It’s been an adjustment. And I’m close with my kids. Living away from them has been a major transition.”

The on-court situation, though, is inviting. Lillard is in a good place with a team that won an NBA title three years ago.

“Playing with Giannis has been great,” he said. “What a luxury it is to have with me a player as dominating on the floor as he is. A lot of nights in Portland, I felt I had to dominate this quarter, or dominate this game,    or ‘I gotta come up big in this moment.’ It can almost make you relax a little bit when you know there’s a (teammate) who can get it every single time.

“It has been a pleasure to play with him, and to be part of a team with guys who are in the same stage of their careers that I am. They have tasted winning (a title), and they want to get back to that. It has been a great situation as far as basketball.”

The 2023-24 Bucks, though, remain a work in progress as Lillard meshes with his new teammates, and now Rivers implements his system.

“We aren’t a finished product,” Lillard said. “Any time you plug in a player like myself, there will be an adjustment process. You don’t know how long it will take. You just hope you can work toward what you want it to become.”

Wednesday night’s game was one to remember. There were hundreds of fans, ages seven to 70, sporting Blazers No. “0” jerseys (it’s not “the letter O” — ask the league) as they walked the concourse on the way to their seats. (Funny — I saw no Pat Connaughton or Robin Lopez jerseys). During the game, the fans cheered long and hard for Lillard but rooted just as hard for their team to win.

Lillard felt it, all the way down to the heart.

“I’m not an overly emotional person,” he said. “I’ve been that way since I was a kid. But I’m heavily invested in this city and this organization. I always wanted to win for the Blazers. When your heart is into something like that and you’ve been an underdog your whole life, emotion comes from that. When you rise up and have moments in a Trail Blazer uniform like I had, it comes out organically. Everything has come from true feelings.

“My relationship to the city, the fans and the organization is never-ending. I don’t look at this like closure. I just know what happened to me doesn’t happen often — coming to a city as a draft pick, to be able to have so many accomplishments and have a good relationship with the fans and the organization. A lot of the things I experienced here will always be a huge part of my legacy and what I’ve been able to accomplish as a man and an athlete.”

Before the game, Lillard was asked if he could see himself wearing a Blazer uniform again.

"I’ve always felt that’s how my career would end,” he said. “But this is where I am now. I’m in Milwaukee. I wanted the opportunity to contend. I’m living in that. I see a day where I’ll be in a Trail Blazer uniform again before I’m done, but I can’t let this time slip away looking too far into the future."

Lillard might have given the Blazer fans one more dose of “Dame Time,” one they might not have enjoyed as much. In the closing seconds, with the Blazers leading 117-116, he had the ball at the 3-point line. But Portland’s Malcolm Brogdon was making a run at him, and Lopez was open at the top of the key. Lillard passed it to him.

“Brook was making that shot all night,” Lillard said. “If you can get a quality shot for a good shooter, you make that play. He just missed it.”

Poetic justice, really. The fans got to show their love for the player who gave them so many special moments. And they still got to see the Blazers bag a whopper.

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