Damian Lillard: My Heart Is With The Trail Blazers

February 9, 2022

While the Trail Blazers are revamping the roster, rumors have surfaced that star guard Damian Lillard may want out in search of a new team.

Lillard, however, indicated that’s not true.

“For me, my heart is Portland Trail Blazer,” Lillard said, via Casey Holdahl of NBA.com. “I want to win it. I know that I have a plan that’s going to put me on my best level when I come back to play. And I want our team to fit that.”

Blazers interim GM Joe Cronin has made two big trades ahead of Thursday’s deadline, including sending longtime Portland guard and Lillard running-mate CJ McCollum to the Pelicans (full post).

Per Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN, all the moves made by Cronin created a trade exception worth $21 million — perhaps the largest in the NBA. Overall, the Blazers could have up to $60 million in salary-cap space during the offseason.

This is all being done to rebuild the roster around Lillard, and not without him.

“The Blazers also picked up multiple draft picks and young players in the trades with the Pelicans and Clippers,” via Woj and ESPN. “The plan now for Portland is to pursue high-end talent, not retreat.”

As for McCollum, Lillard seemed to realize that they would be split up at some point.

“This is something that me and C, we talked about it over the years, like, this being a possibility,” Lillard said. “I would say in the last three years it was always something where me and him would talk and he would be like ‘You know, I might be out of here,’ just loosely saying stuff like that and I’d be like ‘Nah, I don’t think so.’

“But as time went on we both knew that it’s going to come a point where we might not be a backcourt anymore, whether that was him getting traded or me getting traded.”