Damian Lillard (Milwaukee Bucks) Season Ending Torn Achilles (April 2025)

Loyalty isn't the way to look at it. They did Dame a big favor and I'm sure he is very grateful. Now he doesn't even have to pretend to work for the $120 million. He can live next season wherever he wants and choose whatever team (Miami) in 2026 if he still wants to play basketball.

He was living the dream of being an NBA player. Now he's living the dream of a dream. It doesn't get any better than that.

 

They have Giannis, they better do everything they can to stay competitive if they want him to stay.

 

Phoenix about to learn a lesson from Milwaukee and stretch and waive Bradley Beal. We can then see Miami jumping to get Beal as well.

 

Phoenix should do just that

Rocket River

 

Chris Haynes on Damian Lillard's next destination: "Look out for the Miami Heat. Throw Portland in there as well"

 

Maybe, but the Suns window with Booker remains unknown and since they plan on being terrible this coming season (and maybe next), may as well ride it out and be done with the contract in two years.

There is no reason to stretch a contract and sacrifice the future unless a team is trying to win now.

 

Think Damian has come to terms with the stretching.

League sources say Damian Lillard is elated with this decision, as it puts him in the kind of basketball-first position that few All-Star level players, if any, have experienced in league history. In short, he’ll be able to join the contending team of his choosing, either sometime soon or perhaps next summer, without the financial aspect of the decision playing a significant part.
Source: New York Times

 

I heard they couldn't do that this season, as they already had too much dead money in Little and Liddell. A team is only allowed to have 15% of cap as dead money. Lilliard ended up at 14.6 %. Bael would be about 14% and the Suns have 2.5% dead money already.

 

Brian Windhorst on the Bucks waiving Damian Lillard to sign Myles Turner: “This is mortgaging your mortgage to buy a sports car.”

 

Do you know if the Lakers are in a similar situation? It would be wild if the Lakers buy out LeBron.

 

Does waiving Dame to sign Turner actually make the Bucks better come playoff time? If I'm Giannis, I am unimpressed.

 

It does since Dame probably won't play next year.

 

I had assumed he would be back before the playoffs, but maybe that's wrong. In any case, that is still a really bad supporting cast around Giannis IMO.

 

[Marc Spears] on Damian Lillard: "He's ecstatic. There's about double-digit number of teams calling, interested in him. When will Dame be back? There's some speculation that he could be back around the all star break. If he signs with a team, it's probably gonna be a 2-year deal."

 

You may be right about Dame returning for the playoffs.

 

Honestly, if the Rockets knew about this, I would have seriously considered getting him on the NT-MLE deal instead of DFS. I guess he doesn't really fit Ime's culture, but damn, talk about a turn-around to our spacing with Dame and KD. Too late now in any case.

 

That's what I heard too!

Stretching Beal is impossible. Waiving him is possible though - I think they can carry dead non-stretch money.

 

Lillard is likely to be 36 before he ever plays again and will likely have a lot less quickness and bounce when he comes back, if he comes back....for a 6'1-6'2 PG, that's probably fatal for his career.

He had a complete tear of the Achilles, so he's looking at a return being somewhere in late April to early May of next year. There's no way a team plugs him in on a playoff roster with basically no games to work the rust off.

Honestly, I think he gets one more short term deal the season after next and will likely perform so poorly that he retires.

 

This seems incredibly reckless by Milwaukee. $22M is real money to have tied up on your cap table for the next 5 years. Especially to get Myles Turner, he can shoot it I guess but he was pretty meh in the playoffs.

Not sure why they are waiting for Giannis to say he wants out. They should have asked him if he's cool with minor roster changes this year with an eye on making a splash next summer when Dame is an expiring. If he's not on board ask him for a list of preferred destinations and get a haul.

Waiting until after free agency doesn't make any sense. Most teams will have very limited flexibility to make anything happen until about December / January.