Damian Lillard has said over and over again that he wants to compete for a championship. After 11 years in Portland, he decided he needed to move somewhere else to make it happen.
Lillard asked the Trail Blazers for a deal, a move that would end the seven-time All-Star’s tenure with that team, two people familiar with the matter said Saturday.
Lillard will attract interest from the Miami Heat and Brooklyn Nets, among others, according to people who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because no details have been released. One person told the AP that Lillard is a favorite of Miami — the Eastern Conference champion — though that doesn’t guarantee the Trail Blazers will work to facilitate this particular move.
Lillard is coming off a season in which he averaged 32.2 points with the Trail Blazers. He’s been a seven-time All-NBA selection and selected to the NBA’s 75th Anniversary Team — but he hasn’t come close to a title in his 11 seasons in the league.
He’s met Portland several times in recent weeks, and has asked for a roster upgrade to the point where he can compete for the championship. But these efforts clearly did not appeal to Lillard and led to him requesting a transfer.
His decision was revealed on Day two of the NBA Free Agencyafter Portland made a huge outpouring of the The first night By keeping Jerami Grant in a $160 million five-year deal.
Although his resume is impressive, Lillard hasn’t had much fun on the way to postseason success. The Blazers have only won four playoff series in their 11 seasons, making the Western Conference Finals once during that span. The team went 33-49 this past season, the second straight year of finishing well outside the playoff picture.
But Lillard is, by all accounts, a dynamic player. He averaged at least 24 points per game in each of the last eight seasons, and his career average of 25.2 points ranks fourth among active players (with at least 375 games played) behind Kevin Durant, Joel Embiid, and LeBron James. If this list were expanded to all players without a game minimum, then Luka Doncic, Zion Williamson and Tra Young would also be ahead of Lillard.
He had a 71-point game this past season against Houston, has 17 at least 50-point games in his career — two of them in the playoffs — and is a former rookie of the year, teammate of the year and NBA title winner. Citizenship Award. He’s an Olympic gold medalist, won a medal alongside Miami’s Bam Adebayo at the Tokyo Olympics and has sometimes raved about how much he enjoyed playing the Heat center.
The only glaring omission in Lillard’s biography: heroism. Now he will seek action to change that.
“I would say I want to be remembered for who I was, not as a player, but the principle I stood for no matter how successful I was, how successful my failure was, how much criticism, what people thought I should have done,” Lillard said in an interview with His former colleague Evan Turner on the “Point Forward” podcast earlier this year. I stood for a long time. I have stood tall in every situation and I want to be remembered for that.”
It’s going to take some team — whether it’s Miami, Brooklyn, or someone else — probably a good number of players and recruiting options to convince Portland to trade Lillard. He will make approximately $46 million next season and could earn up to $216 million over the next four years if he exercises his option for the 2026-27 season.
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