The 31-year-old is still at the center of Portland’s plans.
Trail Blazers superstar Damian Lillard played in just 29 games last year, by far the fewest of his career, due to an abdominal surgery that ultimately led to the team shutting him down. It doesn’t appear that the lost season has diminished Portland’s dedication to the six-time All-NBA point guard.
According to Bleacher Report‘s Jake Fischer, the team is set to offer Lillard a two-year contract extension “that will exceed over $100 million.”
Per Spotrac, Lillard is currently on a four-year $176 million deal ending in a player-option for the 2024–25 season. He is set to make over $42 million in 2022–23 on his current deal.
Lillard remains the centerpiece of Portland’s rebuild on the fly after the team sent CJ McCollum to the Pelicans ahead of the 2022 trade deadline.
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Portland traded for Pistons star forward Jerami Grant a week ago, and the team is set to re-sign Jusuf Nurkić, Anfernee Simons and potentially Joe Ingles, per Fischer. The team also added the talented if mysterious Shaedon Sharpe at No. 7 in last week’s NBA draft.
The Blazers finished at 27–55 during Lillard’s injury-plagued 2021–22 season, ending up at No. 13 in the Western Conference. With a healthy Lillard, Portland reached the postseason every year from 2014—his second season in the NBA—to ’21.
Time will tell if the team can return to that level, and finally take a step forward into NBA Finals contention as the 31-year-old Lillard moves into the later stages of his career.
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