In September, the Portland Trail Blazers traded star general Damian Lillard to the Milwaukee Bucks in a three-team trade.
But a recent report suggested the Trail Blazers were ready to send Lillard to the Miami Heat before Lillard’s agent, Aaron Goodwin, made public comments that the point guard wanted to be sent to Miami.
Lillard, 33, is coming off arguably the best season of his professional career.
He averaged 32.
2 points, 4.
8 rebounds and 7
.
3 assists per game in 58 appearances with the Trail Blazers franchise during the 2022-23 season.
Lillard also converted an impressive 46.
3 percent of his field goal attempts and 37.
1 percent of his 3-point attempts a season ago.
The point guard spent 11 seasons in Portland and was consistently one of the NBA’s top scorers during his decade with the Trail Blazers.
He averaged more than 20 points per game in 10 of his 11 seasons with the team and averaged more than 25 points per game in seven seasons.
Arguably the most successful Trail Blazers team that Lillard played for was during the 2018-19 season. They finished the regular season with an excellent 53-29 record — tied with the Houston Rockets for the third-best record in the Western Conference — and made it all the way to the Western Conference Finals.
The Trail Blazers defeated Russell Westbrook and the Oklahoma City Thunder in five games in the first round of the 2019 playoffs and Nikola Jokic and the Denver Nuggets in seven games in the second round.
Lillard and the Trail Blazers were thoroughly outplayed by Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson and the Golden State Warriors in the Western Conference Finals, however. The Warriors swept the Trail Blazers in four games, and Lillard converted just 37.1 percent of his field-goal attempts for the series, while Curry shot 46.9 percent from the field.
The Bucks and Boston Celtics currently stand out as the two most talented teams in the Eastern Conference after the former traded for Lillard and the latter for Jrue Holiday and Kristaps Porzingis in the offseason.
The Eastern Conference finals between these two teams in the spring would make for an interesting seven-game series.
