Miami Heat Emerge As Biggest Losers Of Damian Lillard Trade To ...

28 Sep 2023
Damian Lillard

The Miami Heat emerge as big losers following Damian Lillard's trade to the Milwaukee Bucks. (Photo ... [+] by Megan Briggs/Getty Images)

Getty Images

There’s no other way to cut it — the Miami Heat are the big losers of Damian Lillard’s trade to the Milwaukee Bucks.

To everyone’s surprise, the longtime Portland Trail Blazers guard was traded to the Bucks in a blockbuster trade package including several notable players, including Jrue Holiday, DeAndre Ayton and Jusuf Nurkic, as ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski reports.

“Lillard goes Milwaukee as part of a 3-team deal with Jrue Holiday, Deandre Ayton, Toumani Camara, a 2029 unprotected MIL 1st, and unprotected MIL swap rights in 2028 and 2030 to Blazers,” writes Wojnarowski. “Phoenix lands Jusuf Nurkic, Grayson Allen, Nassir Little and Keon Johnson.”

While the Blazers certainly consistently toyed with the idea of trading Lillard to another team outside of the Heat — the Toronto Raptors emerged as front-runners for Lillard as recently as yesterday — it was hard to envision a scenario where Lillard did not land in Miami.

The 33-year-old superstar guard repeatedly stressed his desire to be traded to the Heat. Lillard’s agent, Aaron Goodwin, told Miami Herald’s Barry Jackson that he wants to play in Miami.

"I do what I should for my client," Goodwin told the Miami Herald's Barry Jackson. "Some teams I did call. Other teams have called me. It's a respectful relationship with most teams. Truthfully, he wants to play in Miami. Period."

Miami — led by the All-Star duo of Jimmy Butler and Bam Adebayo — have been to the NBA Finals in two of the past four seasons. However, they’ve come up short both times and Lillard was seen as the missing piece that would catapult the Heat as title favorites.

However, Portland made it clear that the Heat’s trade offer of Tyler Herro and two first-round draft picks weren’t enough to sway them into trading their seven-time All-Star guard.

As evidenced by Lillard’s trade to the Bucks — which nets them a new star center in Ayton and a first-round pick — it’s obvious that the Blazers were not bluffing after all.

The Heat have been banking on acquiring Lillard all offseason long. It also seemed that the idea was that it was a foregone conclusion that the Blazers would eventually budge — around this time before the start of training camp — in trading Lillard to Miami.

Now, the Heat are left with two open roster spots — purposely left unfilled in the event of a potential Lillard trade — along with the offseason departures of two of their top five leading scorers from last season’s playoffs in Gabe Vincent and Max Strus.

The Bucks will now enter the 2023-24 season as the clear title favorites with a new “Big Three” trio of Lillard, Giannis Antetokounmpo and Khris Middleton. Adding further insult to injury is the fact that the Bucks lost to the Heat in the first round of the playoffs as the top seed in the East. This trade in acquiring Lillard now gives a punch to the gut as far as Miami’s title hopes are concerned.

Most importantly, it finally gives the Bucks a closer they can rely on due to Antetokounmpo’s struggles at the free-throw line. One of the chief reasons the Bucks were eliminated by the eighth-seeded Heat were due to the two-time MVP’s struggles at the free-throw line, particularly in their series-closing Game 5 loss.

The Bucks shot 45 free-throw attempts in comparison to the Heat’s 17 free-throw attempts. However, Antetokounmpo went just 10-of-23 from the charity stripe in the Game 5 loss.

Although the Bucks won the NBA Finals in 2021, they’ve consistently fallen short of expectations during the Antetokounmpo era. Milwaukee has finished as the No. 1 seed in the East in three of the past five seasons, only to lose in the playoffs prior to the start of the NBA Finals.

Entering the upcoming season, Milwaukee will enter as the clear title favorites at +360 odds, according to FanDuel. Meanwhile, the Heat — the defending Eastern Conference champions — will enter tied for the 10th-best odds and fifth overall in the conference.

The Heat banked their 2023-24 title hopes on acquiring Lillard. They now come up empty as they enter a season where they face an uphill battle in just making it back to the NBA Finals.

Read more
Similar news