AP Photo/Jeff Swinger
Portland Trail Blazers point guard Damian Lillard doesn’t plan to hold out of the team’s training camp if it fails to honor his trade request by then.
“I’m told that if he ends up back in camp, he would show up and play,” Aaron Fentress of The Oregonian/OregonLive said on the Blazer Focused podcast. “He’s gonna get his money. I mean, he’s not dumb.
“But if you play him and he twists ankle or has a calf thing again, or Lord knows what, now what are you gonna get for him? And if you end up keeping him for the entire season, what are you gonna get three or four first-round picks and something for a 34-year-old Damian Lillard coming off another year with another type of nagging injury?”
Lillard, a seven-time All-NBA player, just averaged a career-high 32.2 points per game in his 11th season in Portland.
Lillard has specifically requested a trade to the Miami Heat, but Blazers general manager Joe Cronin has said he’s willing to wait “months” to get the best offer for his team.
Per ESPN’s Brian Windhorst, the best offer on the table for Lillard right now is from the Heat, according to recent comments on NBA Today (h/t Shandel Richardson of Inside the Heat).
“As I look across the league and have conversations with executives and agents, I can’t identify another team that is seriously making an offer for Damian Lillard at this point,” Windhorst said. “My belief is that the Heat can’t either.”
As of now, it’s been a month since the Lillard trade request went public, and preseason camp is set to begin in September with the regular season starting in October.
Lillard remains a Blazer, but there’s plenty of time to get something done. It likely doesn’t behoove either side to have Lillard in camp if both sides have ultimately moved on from, so perhaps something gets done before Portland begins more serious preparations for 2023-24.
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