NBA Trade Rumors: Are potential dark horse landing spots for Damian Lillard finally emerging?
When Damian Lillard demanded a trade away from the Portland Trail Blazers, I don’t think anyone envisioned that it would take the entire offseason to get something done. Even that’s not a certainty. There’s a very real chance that Lillard could end up starting the season on the Blazer roster.
One of the big reasons why is the fact that there isn’t – or wasn’t – that much of a trade market for Lillard. At least thus far, doing of Lillard’s camp or not, the Miami Heat have predictably been the most interested team in pursuing a Lillard trade. However, there’s hope that could be changing.
In the latest Lillard update, ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski noted that there’s a sense that the Blazers have spent the last couple of weeks doing a lot more negotiating with teams.
There are clearly two interesting parts of this update. The fact that the Blazers are talking about a potential Lillard trade – or negotiating – and the fact that there could be multiple teams at play here. This report, assuming it is accurate, gives off the impression that there possibly could be a non-Heat market developing for Lillard.
If that is the case, it would help the Blazers on multiple fronts.
A market could be developing for Damian Lillard
Even if the Blazers want to do Lillard right by trading him to his preferred landing spot, that really can’t happen until Portland gets a strong indication of what his market is. And that can’t happen until there are multiple teams interested and willing to make an offer. Once that happens, the Blazers could then take the best of those offers to Miami so some real negotiations can take place.
That could very well be what’s happening now.
The question is if there’s enough motivation from the Blazers’ perspective to get a deal done before the start of training camp, wherever the landing spot may end up being.
At this point, it would be surprising if Lillard wasn’t playing for another team by the end of the season. The problem is that it’s almost impossible to predict when a potential deal will end up happening. But at least from an outside perspective, it does seem like there is some momentum building toward a potential deal.