Waking up today must have had Portland Trail Blazers fans pinching themselves to make sure Thursday afternoon's announcement wasn't just some sort of dream. Sure enough, it wasn't. Damian Lillard is officially a Blazer once again, and all feels right in the world. It's valid for fans not to care about the roster fit for Dame, and just feel elated to have him back where he belongs once again. At the same time, it's also probably true that bringing him on complicates the Jrue Holiday trade just a bit.
Firstly, Holiday's contract is no small matter. He's set to be paid north of $100 million over the course of the next three seasons. When you think about Portland having to shell out that much on top of the $42 million they just gave Dame, we're talking about a relatively expensive backcourt all of a sudden. Or at the very least, the path to having max cap space in 2026 just became much more complicated.
Then there's the fit, which again, I think Blazers fans probably just don't care as much about and rightfully so. But if we think about it, Holiday was brought on to this team to be a veteran mentor to the younger guys on the squad in the upcoming season. Now he'll be sharing that responsibility with Lillard, who of course isn't set to suit back up until the 2026-27 season at this point. There's a world in which that scenario creates a bit of overlap.
Lillard's return brings some more questions concerning the roster
It certainly made much more sense to trade for Holiday before number 0 was back in town. Now, the question of what this team's overall outlook will be looms large. Portland came up just short of making the play-in this past season, and the Holiday move was reportedly a sort of announcement that they saw themselves as playoff bound next season.
That estimation makes sense if you consider the internal belief in this roster and in the improvements expected to come. Chauncey Billups has a lot of confidence in Scoot Henderson and has spoken on him taking a big leap in 2025-26. This team could absolutely take that step up, but then where does that leave them when Lillard does eventually return to the lineup?
Frankly, these are questions for later, but it's still smart for the organization to be considering them now. In the meantime, Trail Blazers fans can bask in the glory of knowing that Damian Lillard is a part of their team once again, and spend hours thinking of all the excitement that lies ahead.