PORTLAND >> Damian Lillard is back where he started.

Lillard, an Oakland native, signed a three-year deal worth $42 million to return to the Portland Trail Blazers, a person with knowledge of the deal told the Associated Press on Thursday. The person spoke to the AP on the condition of anonymity because the deal had not been officially announced.

ESPN first reported the deal.

Lillard was the sixth pick in the 2012 NBA draft by the Trail Blazers and spent 11 seasons with Portland before he was traded to the Milwaukee Bucks just before the 2023-24 season.

The 35-year-old tore his left Achilles tendon during a first-round NBA playoff series against the Indiana Pacers and required surgery. The Bucks waived him earlier this month and stretched the remaining $113 million on his contract.

This past season with the Bucks, Lillard ranked 10th in the league in scoring (24.9) and assists (7.1) while earning his ninth All-Star Game selection.

Lillard posted a video to his Instagram on Thursday of the Trail Blazers’ locker room, ending with a frame of a locker labeled with his name, followed by the words “Together Again.”

He wrote ”RipCityyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!!!!!!!!!”

Lillard averaged 32.2 points his final season in Portland. He became just the seventh player in NBA history to score more than 70 points in a game when he finished with 71 against the Houston Rockets that season.

Lillard, who wears number “0” in honor of his hometown, attended Oakland High from 2006 to 2008 for his junior and senior years.

Gilgeous-Alexander wins ESPY >> NBA Finals MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander was named best male athlete at the ESPYS on Wednesday night.

Gilgeous-Alexander led the Oklahoma City Thunder to the NBA championship last month while piling up hardware as league MVP and scoring champion.

“It’s a dream come true and for dreams to come true it takes a village,” he said, thanking his wife, parents, brother and others. “Those names probably don’t mean much but to me they mean everything.”

Basketball Hall of Famer Oscar Robertson accepted the Arthur Ashe Award for Courage from point guard Russell Westbrook.

Robertson was president of the NBA Players’ Association at the time of a landmark antitrust lawsuit against the NBA in 1970. It led to an extensive reform of the league’s strict free agency and draft rules and eventually to higher salaries for all players.

The 86-year-old Robertson, a 12-time All Star known as The Big O during his career, was the first Black president of any sports labor union.

“I knew there was work to do. There was a desperate need for players to have more career security, improved working conditions and other accommodations,” he said. “In life, it’s important to be persistent or as I have been called stubborn.”

Silver talks expansion >> Saying owners have a “curiosity” about the notion, Commissioner Adam Silver said this week that the league will now study the issue more formally as part of an in-depth analysis, which would be the first official move in a long process toward adding franchises.

There’s no timetable for how long the process will take, nor have any decisions been made on what the expansion fee will be, when the new teams will start play — or even if expansion is going to actually happen.

“A lot of analysis still needs to be done and nothing has been predetermined,” Silver said at the league’s board of governors meeting in Las Vegas.

The league isn’t creating a new committee to study expansion; the duties, for now, will fall primarily to a pair of existing groups, with the advisory finance committee leading and the audit and strategy committee also involved.