Dame Time returns: Damian Lillard earns improbable 3-Point Contest win at All-Star Weekend

Damian Lillard strutted onto the floor at Intuit Dome bathed in 17,000 blinking red lights, sporting a black Portland Trail Blazers “Letter O” uniform and tapping his left wrist.

Yes, it was the return of Dame Time.

And, yes, it was everything Rip City has come to love.

Lillard stepped back into the NBA spotlight in jaw-dropping fashion Saturday afternoon in Inglewood, California, capping an improbable return to All-Star Weekend by winning the 3-Point Contest.

It was the third time Lillard has won the event, joining Larry Bird and Craig Hodges for most in NBA history, and it was his most inspiring and inconceivable victory yet. It’s been nearly 10 months since Lillard tore his left Achilles tendon and he hasn’t played a second in a game this season. Saturday marked his first official competition in an NBA contest since April 27, 2025.

But the man who has made a career out of proving doubters wrong did so yet again, stunning a talented field of shooters that included Devin Booker, Kon Knueppel and former teammate Normam Powell.

“I don’t know if you can compete harder at a 3-Point Shootout,” Lillard said. “But I definitely cared more. I didn’t come in, like, ‘Oh, it is what it is.’ It was like, ‘I’m trying to win. If they give me this opportunity, I don’t want … to go out there and get 15 (points) in the first round and I’m done.’

“I wasn’t going out like that.”

Lillard said he treated the contest like it was a game, bringing intensity and motivation to his first NBA event since Game 4 of the first round of the Eastern Conference playoffs last year. He started strong, scoring 27 points in the first round — tied with Knueppel for second-most — before outlasting Booker for the title.

Lillard competed before Booker in the final round and wowed, making his first four shots, all five from the middle rack and finishing with 29 points.

It set up a do-or-die round for Booker and forced an anxious Lillard to watch his former Olympic teammate try to squash his feel-good moment. And Booker appeared to be on his way to doing just that, reaching 27 points with four balls left in the final rack. But the Phoenix Suns’ All-Star bricked his final four shots, including a last-chance money ball that would have forced a shootout.

“At the end, I was kind of at his mercy,” Lillard said of Booker. “I was just like, ‘Man, these shots can’t go in. I need this one.’ So it fell my way and I got this third one.”

A third one unlike any other.

It was a joke, after all, that landed Lillard a spot in the event. Lillard said he was in the middle of a random phone conversation with Michael Levine, the NBA’s senior vice president of entertainment and player marketing, about his All-Star plans when he made an off-the-cuff remark.

“I was like, ‘If y’all need somebody to shoot, I’m available to do it,’” Lillard said. “And we laughed about it.”

The joke morphed into possibility a few days later, however, when a participant dropped out of the field. Levine checked back in with Lillard, asking if he was serious about taking part in his sixth 3-Point Contest, and Lillard scoffed.

“You know that I’m always serious,” Lillard replied. “If there’s a spot, sign me up. It was literally that simple. I said I would do it and the next day I was in the competition.”

And while he hasn’t played in a game in since last April, Lillard was physically — and emotionally — ready. He said he hoists hundreds of shots virtually every morning, pushing himself and testing his Achilles in a variety of shooting drills that simulate real-life game action. Catch-and-shoot threes. Off-the-dribble threes. Pull-up threes. Stand-still threes. They’ve been Lillard’s lifeline to hoops as he’s been forced to watch a full season from the sidelines for the first time in his 13-year career.

The time away, combined with an endless loop of individual shooting drills, has forced Lillard to confront his own basketball boredom and left him salivating for any kind of competition. But it also has left him emboldened.

“I came in confident,” Lillard said. “I’m fresh. I think just having this year to be away, my mind and body is just fresh. … I knew it was an opportunity to get back on this stage. I’m going 1-on-0 with myself every single day, trying to get numbers and trying to perform better and better and be healthier and healthier. So just to be among other players and put a number on the board … (be around) fans, stuff like that, I was excited for it.”

Lillard said he has spent the last 10 months asking “lots of questions” of doctors and trainers and other NBA players who’ve faced his injury, including Kevin Durant, Jayson Tatum and Rudy Gay. There were days he said he couldn’t walk right. There were long, arduous days without basketball. He was unable to shoot for so long, he said, he can’t remember how long it lasted.

But the conversations also proved to be “more encouraging than discouraging,” Lillard said. A torn Achilles used to signal the end of an athlete’s career. But modern medicine, Durant and Tatum — who recently returned to full basketball activities — have put much of that fear to rest.

Lillard’s improbable victory on Saturday is yet another example.

“I do think I represent strength,” he said. “We are athletes, so when we go through an injury, people act like it’s the end of the world because people are used to us being lifted up and everything being about us. But people go through way worse and they carry on and they continue to move forward. So, for me, it was more about representing strength for people.”

This strength will not catapult Lillard back to the court full-time this season, however. He’s inching toward the final stages of rehab, which, he said, includes a “harsh scale of testing” that routinely proves his right Achilles remains “significantly stronger” than his left.

This reality has forced him to be “honest” and patient” with his recovery.

Saturday may have teased the return of Dame Time. But that return won’t come anytime soon.

“I think if this was five years ago,” Lillard said, “I probably would have won this competition and been like, ‘Oh, man, like, I can get out there and go.’ But I think I’m also at an age and time in my life where I recognize those emotions are not in my best interest. So that’s kind of where it’s at.”