NBA: Damian Lillard asks Trail Blazers for trade

Damian Lillard has said repeatedly that he wants to fight for a championship. After 11 years in Portland, he’s decided he needs to go elsewhere to make that happen.

Lillard asked the Trail Blazers for a trade, a move that will end the seven-time All-Star’s tenure with that team, two people familiar with the matter said Saturday. The team later confirmed that Lillard made the request.

Lillard has attracted interest from the Miami Heat and Brooklyn Nets, among others, said those who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because no details were made public. One of the people told the AP that Lillard favors Miami — the reigning champions of the Eastern Conference — though that hardly guarantees the Trail Blazers will work to facilitate that particular move.

“We’ve made it clear that we want Dame here, but he has let us know today that he wants to leave and would rather play elsewhere,” Blazers general manager Joe Cronin said in a statement distributed by the team. “What hasn’t changed for us is that we’re determined to win and we’re going to do what’s best for the team to pursue that goal.”

Lillard is coming off a season where he averaged 32.2 points for the Trail Blazers. He is a seven-time All-NBA selection and was selected for the NBA’s 75th Anniversary team, but he has never come close to a title in his 11 seasons in the league.

He has met Portland several times in recent weeks and asked to upgrade the roster to the point where he can compete for a championship. But those efforts apparently didn’t sit well with Lillard and led him to ask to be moved.

His decision was revealed on the second day of NBA free agency, after Portland made a huge splash on night one by retaining Jerami Grant on a five-year, $160 million deal.

As great as his resume is, Lillard hasn’t enjoyed much in the way of postseason success. The Blazers have won only four playoff series in its 11 seasons, making the Western Conference Finals once in that span. The team went 33-49 last season, the second straight year in which it finished well outside the playoffs.

But Lillard is a dynamic player anyway. He averaged at least 24 points per game in each of the past eight seasons, and his career average of 25.2 points ranks fourth among active players (with at least 375 games) behind Kevin Durant, Joel Embiid, and LeBron James. If that list were extended to all players with no game minimums, Luka Doncic, Zion Williamson and Trae Young Lillard would also be ahead.

He played a 71-point game against Houston last season, has 17 career-high 50-point games—two of them in the playoffs—and is a former rookie of the year, teammate of the year, and citizenship award winner of the NBA. He’s even an Olympic gold medalist, winning one along with Miami’s Bam Adebayo at the Tokyo Games and raving about how much he enjoyed playing with the Heat center.

The only glaring omission on Lillard’s resume is a championship. And now he will look for a move to change that.

“I would say I want to be remembered for who I was, not as a player, but for the principle I stood on, no matter how successful I was, how big the failure, the criticism, what people thought I should have done. no matter what people think of me…no matter what, I want to be remembered for who I was,” Lillard said in an interview with former teammate Evan Turner for the Point Forward podcast earlier this year. I’ve stood my ground in every situation and I want to be remembered for that.”

It will take a team – be it Miami, Brooklyn or anyone else – a huge amount of probably both players and draft picks to convince Portland to trade Lillard. He will earn nearly $46 million next season and could earn as much as $216 million over the next four years if he exercises his option for the 2026-2027 season.

While Lillard was well-liked in Portland, there was speculation about his future with the team as the Blazers nabbed point guard Scoot Henderson with the No. 3 overall pick in the recent draft instead of packing the pick for a proven star.

At the time, Cronin said he intended to play both Lillard and Henderson.

“I’d like to see Dame retire a Trail Blazer. I don’t feel like trading it. I really hope this works out here,” Cronin said on draft night. “And I think you can see how excited I am about Scoot Henderson. He has the opportunity to become a special player in this league.”

The Blazers signed Henderson to a rookie contract on Saturday. The 6-foot-2 teen who has been compared to Russell Westbrook spent the past two seasons with the G League Ignite.

Last season with Ignite, Henderson averaged 17.6 points and a team-high 6.5 assists. He graduated early from high school in Marietta, Georgia, to become the youngest ever player in the G League.

——

AP Sports Writer Anne M. Peterson in Portland, Oregon, contributed to this report.