Damian Lillard made NBA history this offseason when the Milwaukee Bucks waived him with two years and nearly $113 million left on his contract. The Phoenix Suns followed suit with Bradley Beal shortly thereafter, although they got him to give back nearly $14 million in a buyout so they could waive-and-stretch his remaining dead cap hit if so desired.
Lillard wound up signing a three-year, $41.6 million contract with the Portland Trail Blazers, the team with which he spent the first 11 years of his NBA career. Meanwhile, Beal signed a two-year, $11 million deal with the Los Angeles Clippers after some reported recruiting from James Harden. Both of them were previously on supermax contracts worth roughly 35 percent of the salary cap.
Lillard is likely to miss the entire 2025-26 campaign as he recovers from the torn Achilles that he suffered in the first round of the playoffs, but he's fresh off averaging 24.9 points, 7.1 assists and 4.7 rebounds per game this past season. If he's able to return to anything close to that form, he might widely outproduce the $13.4 million that he's owed in 2026-07. Beal wasn't quite as productive as Lillard—he averaged 17.0 points, 3.7 assists and 3.3 rebounds—but he's a phenomenal value at only $5.3 million this year.
For different reasons, both Lillard and Beal now find themselves at a career inflection point that many previous stars have struggled to handle well. Getting paid like a star for the next two years from their previous teams might help soften the blow, but they're each at the age where they'll need to embrace transitioning from being franchise cornerstones to more of an ancillary role.
For every Vince Carter, who seamlessly handled that transition and milked nearly another full decade out of his NBA career, there are 10 times as many Allen Iversons, who never quite figured out how to play as a scaled-down version of his past self. How Lillard and Beal navigate that shift could help determine the Blazers and Clippers' short-term ceiling.
Can Dame take a back seat in Portland?
Kevin Durant has become the poster child for a star who successfully overcame an Achilles tear, but he's more of the exception than the rule. Besides, he was only 31 years old when he tore his Achilles during the 2019 NBA Finals. Lillard just turned 35 in mid-July.
Kobe Bryant, who tore his Achilles only six games into the 2013-14 season, may be the more instructive example. Bryant returned to play two more seasons before retiring, although his shooting efficiency plummeted. After never shooting worse than 41.7 percent from the floor across his first 18 seasons, he shot 37.3 percent overall and 29.3 percent from deep in his first year back, and he finished his age-37 campaign shooting 35.8 percent overall and 28.5 percent from deep.
During an episode of Mind the Game with Steve Nash and LeBron James, Durant revealed that more than five years removed from his Achilles injury, his right calf is still smaller than his left calf.
"Those deep threes that both [Lillard and Jayson Tatum] shoot, they shoot a lot of tough, stepback threes," he said. "And I was shooting those before I got injured, and I fine-tuned my game to take some of that stuff out. The side-step. Not because it's a bad shot, it's because I didn't truly have enough power in my right leg yet for me to do those moves."
During his introductory press conference with the Blazers, Lillard expressed confidence that he'd eventually return to form. However, he'll likely be 36 the next time he suits up for a regular-season game, and he was already a mediocre defender prior to his injury. The odds are firmly against him being as productive upon his return. In fact, he could be even more of a glaring liability on defense than he was before.
Luckily, the Blazers aren't paying Lillard $50-plus million per year anymore. They don't need him to be the Damian Lillard of old. They're paying him like a high-end reserve or low-end starter. Anything he provides beyond that will be gravy.
If Lillard tries to take back control of the Blazers in 2026-27 and become the offensive focal point once again, it could be a slippery slope for the entire team. But if he embraces a smaller role and uses his gravity to serve as more of a decoy, allowing the likes of Scoot Henderson, Shaedon Sharpe and Deni Avdija to remain as the Blazers' primary threats, that could elevate the Blazers from frisky upstart to a legitimate dark horse in the West.
Did the Phoenix experience humble Beal?
Unlike Lillard, Beal isn't trying to overcome a career-altering injury. He missed 29 games in each of the past two seasons due to various ailments, but he's heading into the 2025-26 campaign healthy. His time in Phoenix had simply run its course, particularly after the Suns traded Durant to the Houston Rockets for a package including Jalen Green.
When Beal still had two years and roughly $110 million left on his contract—along with a no-trade clause that proved particularly poisonous for Phoenix—he routinely earned the (dis)honor of the NBA's worst deal. Now that he's earning less than taxpayer mid-level exception money, though? He might have gone from the NBA's worst contract to one of the league's best in the span of a few days.
The real question moving forward is how Beal approaches his time with the Clippers, and whether his experience in Phoenix humbled him at all. It wasn't solely his fault that the Suns' Big Three failed to launch, but his routine absences and defensive apathy didn't help matters. It was no coincidence that the Suns briefly showed some spunk last season when Beal got injured and rookies Ryan Dunn and Oso Ighodaro suddenly cracked the rotation.
The Suns briefly moved Beal to the bench in the month leading up to the trade deadline, which led to speculation about whether they were trying to get him to waive his no-trade clause to facilitate a move. At the time, he made it clear that he wouldn't be a distraction, but he believed he was still a starting-caliber player.
According to ESPN's Ohm Youngmisuk, Beal is expected to start alongside Harden in the Clippers' backcourt this season. Although he's fresh off averaging only 17.0 points—his lowest mark since the 2014-15 campaign—team president Lawrence Frank expressed confidence that his new surroundings would help bring out the best him.
"I think some of the areas that, especially in his Washington days, that he was able to explore with not the same level of talent [there], I think we'll be able to get a little bit more out of [here]," Frank said. "Like with his pick-and-roll play, it's different when you have the guys that we have spacing the floor and the centers that we have that he will be playing with. Whether it's [Ivica Zubac], whether it's Brook [Lopez], whether it's John Collins, and you have that nice balance of defense and offense on the floor."
After the additions of Beal, Lopez, Collins and Chris Paul this offseason, the Clippers are arguably one of the deepest teams in the league. Although they're also teeming with older, oft-injured players, that volume of depth should help ease the burden on each individual player.
The Clippers don't need Beal to lead the league in field-goal attempts, which he did in back-to-back seasons with the Washington Wizards in 2019-20 and 2020-21. They just need him to slot in as a secondary playmaker and ball-handler alongside Harden and Kawhi Leonard, along with ideally not being a complete traffic cone on defense.
Beal has a $5.6 million player option for the 2026-27 season, so he's effectively playing for his next contract this year. If he thrives in a scaled-down role, that might help other teams envision him as a potential fit next summer. However, the days of him being a routine 25- or 30-point scorer in the NBA are over. The sooner he makes peace with that, the better.
Both Lillard and Beal thus stand at a career inflection point. Due to age and injuries, neither of them can be a franchise cornerstone anymore. They can still be productive and make a legitimate impact on a team, but they aren't their former selves.
How they handle that transition will go a long way toward determining how the rest of their careers will play out.