Weber State Professional Athletes

Dame's Back — But Is Portland's New Backcourt Built to Last?

Damian Lillard's return from a torn left Achilles is the most compelling subplot surrounding the Portland Trail Blazers heading into the 2026-27 season — and the Weber State product is clearly ready to make noise again, both on the court and off it.

Lillard missed all of last season after suffering the injury during the 2025 playoffs, but the early reports out of Portland are turning heads for all the right reasons. Blazers personnel have been effusive in their praise of his recovery, with one team source describing his condition simply as: "He looks phenomenal." For a 36-year-old guard coming off one of the most devastating injuries in basketball, that's not a small thing.

Adding to the intrigue is Portland's blockbuster offseason acquisition of Ja Morant from the Memphis Grizzlies. The Blazers are now deploying two elite, ball-dominant point guards in the same backcourt — a pairing that has generated as much skepticism as excitement around the league.

The Case For — and Against — Lillard-Morant

Not everyone is worried. Former NBA head coach PJ Carlesimo has gone on record dismissing concerns about the fit, suggesting the two guards are capable of sharing the floor effectively. The optimist's view: Portland has two legitimate star creators who can take pressure off each other and keep defenses permanently off-balance.

But there's a loud counter-argument. An anonymous NBA scout delivered a blunt pre-camp assessment of Morant, calling him "physically unfit" and questioning whether the former All-Star has done the work to perform at a high level alongside Lillard. "He's got a bad knee, doesn't really work on his physical fitness," the scout said, according to ClutchPoints. "I doubt that he's all of a sudden become a changed man." It's a harsh read — and an anonymous one — but it reflects real uncertainty around how this experiment plays out.

What isn't uncertain is Lillard's commitment to the moment. Ahead of training camp, Dame dropped a new track titled "Nothing Without You" with Souls of Mischief, continuing his long-running parallel career in music. It's a vintage Lillard move: full engagement, on every front, at all times.

Where Dillon Jones Fits In

Weber State's other active NBA alumnus, Dillon Jones, is with the Philadelphia 76ers as a forward. No notable activity surfaced for Jones during this period, but his presence in the league keeps the Wildcats' NBA pipeline alive on the East Coast while all eyes in the West stay fixed on Lillard.

The 2026-27 season will answer a lot of questions Portland has been carrying for years. Can Lillard's Achilles hold up over an 82-game grind? Can two lead guards truly coexist at a winning level? And has Morant, now in a new city, turned a corner personally and physically? Weber State fans who followed Dame from Ogden to stardom know better than to bet against him. The rest of the league is watching closely to find out if they're right.

Weber State Alumni NBA Roundup | Sept. 13–19, 2026

Two Weber State alumni are making noise in the NBA this week — one landing a new contract, the other returning to familiar ground under dramatically different circumstances.

Duop Reath Finds a Home with the Suns

Center Duop Reath has signed a one-year, veteran minimum deal with the Phoenix Suns for the 2026-27 season, securing his spot on an NBA roster heading into camp. Reath spent last season with the Portland Trail Blazers, where he developed into reliable frontcourt depth — now Phoenix is banking on that same reliability.

The timing makes sense for the Suns. Starting center Mark Williams is out, leaving a crater in Phoenix's frontcourt that Reath figures to help fill. For a Suns team trying to stay competitive, a big man with NBA-seasoned reps is exactly the low-risk, high-upside addition that makes sense on a minimum deal.

It's a straightforward business move, but don't undersell what it means for Reath: sticking on an NBA roster in the modern era is never a given, and a former Weber State Wildcat has done it again.

Damian Lillard's Homecoming Gets Complicated

Meanwhile, Damian Lillard — the most decorated Weber State alumnus in NBA history — is heading back to Portland, and the Trail Blazers look nothing like the team he left.

The Blazers have added Lillard alongside Ja Morant and installed Micah Nori as head coach for 2026-27, making Portland one of the more intriguing roster experiments in the league. Lillard's return to the city where he built his legend carries obvious emotional weight, but it also raises real basketball questions: how do Lillard and Morant share the ball, and what does Nori's system look like with two ball-dominant guards?

For Weber State fans, the storyline writes itself — their most famous alum, back where it all started to mean something, now tasked with helping rebuild a franchise in the middle of an unconventional renaissance.

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Two Wildcats, two new chapters. Reath's is quieter but no less earned. Lillard's is louder than anything happening in the league right now.

Dame Time Is Coming Back — and the League Is Already Warned

Damian Lillard's comeback story is real, it's imminent, and if Draymond Green has anything to say about it, the rest of the NBA should be afraid.

The Weber State product is returning to the Portland Trail Blazers after missing significant time with a torn left Achilles tendon — one of the most feared injuries for an elite guard who built his legacy on explosive step-back threes and late-clock heroics. But if a recent viral workout video is any indication, Lillard's step hasn't gone anywhere.

The clip showed Lillard drilling an extraordinary 1,100 makes in a single shooting session, a display so jaw-dropping it caught the attention of Golden State Warriors star Draymond Green. On his podcast, The Draymond Green Show, Green issued a pointed message to the league: consider this your warning. After a year away from the game, Lillard is coming back, and his shot looks as pure as ever.

The return carries a full-circle weight that goes beyond basketball. Portland was the franchise that drafted Lillard out of Weber State back in 2012, and it's the city where he cemented his legend — from the series-clinching buzzer-beaters to the "Dame Time" mythology that made him one of the most beloved players in Trail Blazers history. A year removed from the game only seems to have sharpened his hunger.

The Blazers context around Lillard's return adds another layer of intrigue. Portland also added Ja Morant this offseason, creating a backcourt dynamic that has the league paying close attention. Former NBA MVP candidate Joakim Noah has already weighed in on why Portland — with its mix of young talent and veterans — could be the ideal landing spot for Morant, and Lillard's veteran presence is a key part of that equation.

For Weber State fans, this is a marquee moment. Lillard has long been the program's most prominent NBA ambassador, and watching him claw back from a torn Achilles — at this level, in this city — is the kind of story that makes alumni lean forward in their seats. The 2025–26 season hasn't tipped off yet, but Lillard is already making noise.

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Also in the League: Fellow Wildcat Dillon Jones remains on the Philadelphia 76ers roster as a small forward, giving Weber State two active representatives in the NBA heading into the new season.

Weber State Alumni in the NBA | Aug. 30 – Sept. 5, 2026

Dame's Shooting Clinic Is Something Else Entirely

Damian Lillard spent the 2025-26 NBA season sidelined with a torn Achilles. He spent it making 100,000 shots.

The Portland Trail Blazers guard revealed this week that he set and achieved the staggering milestone during his rehab year, sharing a photo marking the accomplishment and later releasing a video explaining the mindset behind it. The goal wasn't arbitrary — it was the kind of self-imposed standard that has defined Lillard's career since his days at Weber State, where he turned a mid-major program into a launching pad for one of the league's more decorated careers.

The numbers are almost absurd in isolation. The Blazers recently posted a workout clip showing Lillard draining 1,110 of 1,168 attempts in a single session — a jaw-dropping accuracy rate for any shooter, let alone one in the middle of an Achilles recovery. But per Lillard's own account, that session was just a sliver of the full picture. Over the course of a year, he was stacking those sessions day after day until he cleared six figures.

Achilles tears have ended careers and diminished others. Lillard's response was to outwork the injury itself. Whether that translates into a full return to form when Portland's season tips off remains to be seen, but the volume and precision of his offseason work has set a tone for what the Blazers — now under new ownership after a March 2026 sale — are hoping becomes a bounce-back year for their franchise cornerstone.

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Jones Stumbles on a Big Audition

While Lillard was methodically checking off shots in the gym, fellow Weber State alum Dillon Jones was getting a harder kind of evaluation. The Knicks forward received an opportunity with Team USA ahead of training camp — a chance to make a real impression and cement his place on New York's roster heading into the new season.

It didn't go as hoped. According to reporting from Heavy Sports, Jones failed to capitalize on the moment, leaving his standing with the Knicks murkier than before the opportunity arose. With training camp approaching, the former Weber State wing now faces long odds to make a meaningful push for rotation minutes in New York.

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The Weber State Thread

It's worth pausing on what this week's news says about Weber State's NBA legacy. Lillard remains the program's gold standard — a player whose work ethic is so documented and so outsized that it generates national headlines even during a year when he didn't play a single regular-season minute. Jones, a younger alum still fighting for his foothold, represents the other side of that equation: the ongoing grind of proving you belong at the highest level.

One is making 100,000 shots in his sleep. The other is chasing a roster spot. Both are products of the same Ogden, Utah program — and both are reminders that the path from Weber State to the NBA is never a straight line.