NBA Trade Rumors: Blazers don’t appear serious about trading Damian Lillard

NBA Trade Rumors: From everything that’s been reported, the Portland Trail Blazers don’t appear serious about trading Damian Lillard.

The Portland Trail Blazers have said all the right things ever since Damian Lillard requested a trade away from the team almost three weeks ago. They’ve said that they let Dame down and that they will now work to find him a trade, while also finding the best possible deal for the organization.

It’s understandable yet fair. Under that expectation, you would think that the Blazers would work with Lillard’s camp to get a deal done that would make sense for both sides. So far, that hasn’t happened.

From everything that’s been reported recently, it doesn’t seem that the Blazers’ actions are matching what they’ve said publically when it comes to trading Lillard. You can probably say, at this point, that the Blazers aren’t serious about trading Dame. At least not right now.

Why the Blazers aren’t serious about trading Damian Lillard

Let’s take a look at what we know as of now.

We know that the Blazers don’t really want to trade Dame to his preferred landing spot, the Miami Heat. We also now know that they refused to meet with Miami in Las Vegas. We know that the Heat is essentially trying to negotiate with the Blazers and there has been no response. All of this has been reported, most recently by Chris Haynes.

Based on all that, it’s easy to jump to the conclusion that the Blazers may not even want to trade Lillard. Or don’t want to make the trade on Lillard’s time. The big question is what comes next. What is the next shoe that’s going to drop?

The Blazers could probably get away with what they’re doing for now. It’s July and there’s no rush for a trade right now. However, as we inch closer and closer to the start of training camp, the pressure is only going to rise.

And if Portland still isn’t willing to negotiate with Miami and if another team doesn’t seriously jump into the Lillard sweepstakes, I’m not really sure what happens next without Lillard applying another amount of pressure somehow.

The Blazers seem dug in on their stance, no matter how dubious their stance may be. If we truly think about it, what is the Blazers’ end game? They’re probably hoping another team makes a serious offer that they could accept or at least use it as leverage against Miami. But that, at least for now, seems unlikely to happen.

If that continues to be the case, I have no idea what the Blazers are doing. Quite frankly, they may not know what they’re doing either.