Damian Lillard speaks on being waived by the Milwaukee Bucks: 'It definitely was a shocker'
- Damian Lillard returned to the Portland Trail Blazers after being waived by the Milwaukee Bucks.
- Lillard called the waiver a "cold" side of the business but understood the decision.
- Injuries to Lillard and other key Bucks players hampered the team's success during his two seasons.
On July 21, Damian Lillard held up a red Portland Trail Blazers jersey with his familiar number zero – or “letter 0” – in a news conference reintroducing one of the NBA’s greatest players to a city, fan base and organization he played for over 11 seasons before being traded to Milwaukee in 2023.
“It never felt right not being home,” Lillard said in that news conference. “And through it all I found my way back.”
Lillard acknowledged he believed he would have, one day, returned to Portland in such a setting – just not two summers after requesting a trade away.
The opportunity presented itself through a series of events that began with Lillard tearing his left Achilles tendon in a playoff game between the Bucks and Indiana Pacers on April 29. Pacers point guard Tyrese Haliburton tore his right Achilles on June 22 in Game 7 of the NBA Finals, drastically altering Indiana's future and creaking the door open on Indiana center Myles Turner to depart via free agency.
Then, on July 1, Lillard found out he would be waived by the Bucks – allowing him to become an unrestricted free agent. A little more than two weeks later, he agreed to re-sign in Portland. The homecoming has provided some warmth following his first exposure to a chillier side of the business of basketball.
“Just being re-embraced, just being welcomed back in a situation that I didn’t expect, you know?” he told the Journal Sentinel in a phone interview following the second day of his annual youth camp at the YMCA of Columbia-Willamette in Portland. “I think that’s the craziest part of it is I left here with four years on my deal and in my mind I was gonna be in Milwaukee the next four seasons at least. And that was it. Things turn quickly from being hurt and then being waived unexpected and then obviously (Portland) coming as an aggressive suitor for me to come back.”
But it took a bit of a bruising to get there.
Lillard: Bucks waiver a 'colder' side of NBA
On July 1, days after he said he had dinner with Bucks general manager Jon Horst and assistant general manager Milt Newton in Portland and was reassured about how the organization would support him through his rehabilitation process, Lillard heard a knock on his door as he prepped for a session at the gym.
It was his assistant, telling him to call his agent Aaron Goodwin immediately.
“I grabbed my phone to call him and I saw it on my phone,” Lillard said of the news he was waived. “My screen was on Instagram and when I grabbed my phone to call him, my screen unlocked and the thing at the top of my timeline, it was a double-sided screen with me and Myles Turner and under my name it said ‘waived’ and under his name it said ‘signed’ and he had a Bucks logo by his. I was like, Myles Turner to the Bucks? I had to be waived for him to be signed and that’s how I saw it.
“It definitely was a shocker.”
If there are any players in the NBA with a flatter heart rate or stonier poker face than Lillard they could be counted on a single hand, but there was a tinge of solemnity in his voice recalling that moment.
“It definitely showed me a colder side to the business,” he acknowledged. “Only because you know, like, I give a lot of credit to the Bucks organization. I tell people it’s a top-of-the-line organization, just with how they prioritize the best things for the players, they worked with me a lot in facilitating how I could stay connected with my kids over my two years there. They were very supportive of what I needed to be doing for myself. That was great during my time there.
“But this was definitely a side of the business I hadn’t experienced yet. I understand it, you know? It wasn’t hard for me to understand. I just didn’t know that it would happen to me. I had just hung out with Jon and Milt. I had just went to dinner with them in Portland days before that and it was just like ‘we gonna get through this, we behind you, blah blah blah’. But when push comes to shove the business is gonna be the business and that’s kind of what happened. It’s just a cold business.”
Lillard connected with Goodwin and the Bucks organization, during which messages flooded at a dizzying rate.
“As that was happening I just kind of like wasn’t replying to people because I was trying to take the (expletive) in myself,” he said. “And I talked to my agent, I spoke to the Bucks and they said what they had to say and by the time I got off the phone with them I had already had 12, 15 teams already calling. So, it just turned real quick.
“I had to pivot real quick and start listening to what my next move would be. Am I just gonna sit out and wait? I wasn’t in a hurry. I was just listening and hearing what people had to say. And ultimately, I just had to make the best decision for me all around – basketball, my family, like my peace of mind. I had to make the best overall decision.”
Ultimately, that decision was to return home.
“The way the community and the city welcomed it and was excited about it, I just think that made it a special feeling and that provided a lot of comfort and excitement for me to be going through that part of it,” he said.
Lillard, Bucks experienced bad luck with injury
To have that return, however, he had to have left.
And that is a decision he believes was the right one – even if the Bucks were not able to advance out of the first round of the playoffs in his two seasons in Milwaukee.
“I feel like it was necessary,” he said of the trade. “It was something that had to happen. For what’s happening even now to happen, that had to happen. So I thought it was necessary. Our luck just wasn’t great.”
Lillard was a two-time all-star in his two seasons (131 games) with the Bucks, averaging 24.6 points on 36.4% shooting from behind the three-point line. He also averaged 7.0 assists while helping the team win the 2024 NBA Cup.
But those years were marred by regular-season and playoff injuries to Lillard, Giannis Antetokounmpo and Khris Middleton.
The star duo of Antetokounmpo and Lillard – the highest scoring pair in the NBA – played 116 of a possible 164 regular-season games but just two complete playoff games together.
“I think it’s just basketball,” Lillard said. “It don’t feel incomplete to me. I just feel, it’s just basketball. I think you gotta be a little bit lucky to win big. You gotta be healthy and you gotta be playing your best at the right time and I think we just had bad luck.”