Setting aside all the fanfare that greeted him upon arrival, much was made about Damian Lillard’s first season in Milwaukee. National voices judged his integration as something of a failure, ignoring context. Some Bucks fans were even dismissing him after not even half a season in hunter green. The online dialogue around him and his game was toxic, punctuated by some frankly asinine takes that crossed the line.
To be fair to Lillard, he had a lot working against him last year. Joining a new team mere days before training camp, forgoing a typical offseason of workouts as he protected his body from a value-tanking injury after requesting a trade from the Trail Blazers, a divorce, separation from his children, et cetera. These are all understandable reasons for a slight downturn by one’s lofty standards, and he deserved fans’ grace, though many were too impatient.
The worst basketball problem Lillard had to deal with was probably a rookie head coach thrust into the fire. Adrian Griffin went from heading a team with one point guard and a lower set of expectations (reportedly, the team was prepared to take a step back in the wake of Mike Budenholzer’s firing) to a better point guard and sights on another championship overnight. He even had a spat before the entire team with Terry Stotts—an experienced coach brought in as an assistant for Griff’s benefit and happened to be Dame’s favorite coach from nine successful years with Portland—that made Stotts quit barely a week into training camp. Not a good situation for any Buck, but perhaps even worse for Lillard.
Nevertheless, there was a fair bit of success last year in Dame’s Milwaukee inaugural, even if some won’t admit it. He personally had a successful playoff series, sadly cut short by an untimely injury. Despite a 35.4% mark from three, his second-lowest mark in a full season, he managed typically excellent efficiency with a 59.0% true shooting—exactly his career average. Very broadly speaking, regardless of defense, all but a few teams around the league would love a lead guard who puts up 24.3 PPG, 7.0 APG, and 4.4 RPG over 73 games on .424/.354/.920 shooting, even at age 33.
While Dame deserved more understanding from a segment of the fanbase, his play did merit some degree of _constructive_ criticism. The pick & roll with Giannis was slow to develop, albeit not helped by Griffin, who by the stars’ accounts hardly addressed their two-man game in practice. He went through cold stretches that lasted too long, like last January when he shot just 38.9% from the floor and 27.8% from deep. His defense was mostly bad, as it’s always been. None of that made him a true disappointment, though: after all, his efficiency and per-36 minute production on similar usage eclipsed Most Improved Player Tyrese Maxey, one of the zeitgeist’s darlings last year.
This season, though? Another story completely.
Here are the salient numbers. 25.5 PPG in 36.2 MPG exceeds each of his first four seasons in Rip City, including 2015–16, his first without LaMarcus Aldridge. That’s when he began ascending into the league’s best dozen or so players, probably top-10 as he hit his physical prime in the late 2010s. On a per-36 minute basis, his rebound and assist averages are in line with or better than nearly every year as a Blazer, and his scoring is only a point or so shy of three of his higher-usage campaigns. Turnover percentage is his highest since 2016, but we’re talking 12.5% versus closer to 11%. He became a clear number one option from then on in Portland, but his Milwaukee usage of 28% is not too far south of the 30–31% he routinely hit from 2015–22.
And his efficiency is every bit as good as it was then with a 62.7% TS%, tied for the second-best in his 13-year career. His 55.4% effective field goal percentage is third-best. He could end up with better efficiency and some raw shooting numbers than his final go-around with the Blazers, when he poured in 32.2 PPG over 58 contests. Currently converting from downtown at a 38.0% clip, only three prior seasons exceeded that figure: 2013–14, 2019–20, and 2020–21. Those years he was between 39.1% and 40.1%, so it’s not out of the question he beats one of them. If All-NBA teams were still by position, he’d be a shoo-in for a guard spot as the league’s 14th highest scorer. Given how many guys ahead of him won’t hit the 65-game minimum, he’ll probably make it anyway.
Perhaps best yet, not only are they the highest-scoring duo in the league, but Dame’s on-court chemistry with Giannis is palpably better. We’ll take a deeper dive into their P&R numbers in the future, but every night we see them create for each other in two-man actions. The gravity he continues to command opens up space for both The Greek Freak and cut-happy new acquisition Kyle Kuzma. He’s also had plenty of success coming off screens set by Brook Lopez, often resulting in pullup threes or a defensive foul (even if it’s not the shooting variety often enough).
Dame turns 35 this summer, but I don’t think you can write him off simply due to age moving forward. While he’s long been compared to Steph Curry, who has aged exceptionally, Lillard may not enjoy the same aging curve because of all those years he spent on-ball in Portland. Both guys still have great conditioning, but Dame always was more of a driver and finisher, while Curry could often defer to Draymond Green or Kevin Durant for creation, then do his thing off-ball. Dame has always had to rely on his athleticism more.
Of course, there will always be a gap between Curry and Lillard. But how about another all-time great point guard who was still making All-NBA teams at 35–36 and has _never_ been off-ball? Chris Paul is a different player stylistically as a textbook floor general (the classic “true point guard”) instead of a Steph-type high-volume scorer, but he’s dealt with many more injuries than Lillard over his career. CP3 is nearly 40 and helmed teams from 2005–2023, several through deep playoff runs. Through age 35, he put comparable strain on his body to Dame via high-intensity lead guard play, just via the traditional point guard stuff and more varied scoring locations, contrasting with Dame’s focus on the rim and behind the arc. In fact, Paul played over 5,000 _more_ minutes by this point in his career.
If Dame plays until he’s 39 as CP3 has, the twilight of his career might be a midpoint between the Spurs version of CP3 and whatever Steph will be at that age, which I anticipate will still be really good. In the meantime, he’ll probably fit somewhere between those two’s age 35–37 seasons, when both were still leading playoff teams and making Second or Third Team All-NBA. That’s a great pairing with a younger superstar in his mid-prime and still in MVP conversations. With Lillard’s player option due in summer 2026, the Bucks may not get to witness how he enters the tail end of his career firsthand. But until then, they’re likely to continue getting a player who’s every bit as productive as he was during his prime.