Trail Blazers announce Damian Lillard will miss rest of season
Damian Lillard's season is over.
The Portland Trail Blazers announced on Monday afternoon that Lillard will not return this season as he continues to rehab an abdominal injury.
"Trail Blazers guard Damian Lillard has progressed well through the reconditioning phase of his rehab protocol following his January abdominal surgery," the Blazers said in a statement. "He has met several key performance benchmarks to date and will continue end-stage rehab over the next few weeks. Lillard will miss the remainder of the 2021-22 season."
That's the kind of season it's been for Lillard. He originally injured his abdomen on Dec. 1, but when he still felt pain after seven days of rest, he had an injection to help mitigate that so he could return to the court —which he did on Dec. 12 after missing five straight games. He played out the rest of the month, but was still feeling pain in the new year and had surgery to correct it on Jan. 12. He's been out ever since, but as the team said in its statement, Lillard is progressing well.
Lillard's difficult season has been reflected in the overall performance of the Blazers. Despite installing Chauncey Billups as head coach, Portland has slid back in the standings. They made the playoffs outright last season with a 42-30 record, but with 11 games left this season, they're 26-44 and four games out of the play-in tournament.
With little chance of making even the play-in, there was no advantage in rushing Lillard back from injury just to play in a handful of meaningless games.