PORTLAND, Ore. (KATU) \u2014 Hundreds of fans packed Pioneer Courthouse Square Sunday as the Portland Trail Blazers hosted a special rally to celebrate the return of franchise legend Damian Lillard and to kick off excitement for the upcoming 2025-26 NBA season.<\/p>\n
The event, free and open to the public, transformed downtown Portland into a Blazer-themed street fair complete with games, music, food, giveaways, and interactive booths. <\/p>\n
The seven-time All-Star reflected on his years in Portland, his connection with the city, and took part in a short Q&A session.<\/p>\n
The rally highlighted both Lillard\u2019s enduring impact on Rip City and the importance of the Trail Blazers as a unifying force in the community. <\/p>\n
Fans cheered loudly as the celebration doubled as a countdown to Opening Night, when Portland tips off the regular season against the Minnesota Timberwolves at Moda Center on Oct. 22.<\/p>\n
The Trail Blazers\u2019 2025-26 schedule features eight nationally televised games \u2014 seven on NBC\/Peacock and one on Amazon Prime Video. Locally, fans can watch on KUNP\/KATU and BlazerVision.<\/p>\n
This season, Portland will play three five-game road trips, two five-game homestands, and four separate three-game road swings. <\/p>\n
The team also looks ahead to the Emirates NBA Cup, beginning Oct. 31 at home against the Denver Nuggets. <\/p>\n
Group play continues Nov. 14 in Houston, Nov. 21 at Golden State, and wraps up Nov. 26 at Moda Center against San Antonio.<\/p>\n
The regular season closes April 12 with a home matchup against the Sacramento Kings.<\/p>\n
With Damian Lillard back in Rip City and the new season fast approaching, today\u2019s rally made one thing clear: Portland is ready to rise again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PORTLAND, Ore. (KATU) \u2014 Hundreds of fans packed Pioneer Courthouse Square Sunday as the Portland Trail Blazers hosted…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":245290,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[718,23229,130445,130447,1260,77816,77013,3133,130446,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-245289","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-community","9":"tag-damian-lillard","10":"tag-fan-rally","11":"tag-moda-center","12":"tag-nba","13":"tag-nba-season","14":"tag-opening-night","15":"tag-portland-trail-blazers","16":"tag-rip-city","17":"tag-sports","18":"tag-united-states","19":"tag-unitedstates","20":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115245577834823259","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245289","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=245289"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245289\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/245290"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=245289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=245289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}