Pat Riley and the Miami Heat missed out on their golden goose. On Wednesday, the Portland Trail Blazers agreed to trade star point guard Damian Lillard to the Milwaukee Bucks.
But a recent report indicates that the Heat had a monster trade package on the table for Lillard.
“For their part, league sources say the Heat were prepared in July and August to offer up to three first-round draft picks — with Tyler Herro going to a third team — and multiple second-rounders and swaps along with expiring contracts and 2022 first-round pick Nikola Jović,” Shams Charania and Sam Amick wrote. “But the Blazers were disinterested, with each side developing a level of contentiousness.”
Lillard, 33, was selected with the No. 6 overall pick in the 2012 NBA Draft following a four-season stint playing college basketball at Weber State University and has played 11 seasons in the NBA, all as a member of the Trail Blazers franchise. He averaged a career-high 32.2 points per game along with 4.8 rebounds and 7.3 assists per game in 58 appearances with Portland during the 2022-23 regular season.
Lillard also shot the ball with great accuracy from the field during the 2022-23 regular season, seeing as he how converted 46.3 percent of his field-goal attempts, which is tied for the highest field-goal percentage of his NBA career.
But despite Lillard’s contributions, the Trail Blazers had a forgettable 2022-23 regular season from a collective standpoint. They finished the regular season with a subpar 33-49 record and owned a 17-24 home record and 16-25 road record.
The 6-foot-2 point guard experienced limited playoff success during his decade-plus stint with the Trail Blazers. He made it past the first round of the playoffs three times and reached the Western Conference Finals just once, back in 2019.
Stephen Curry, Draymond Green and the Golden State Warriors embarrassed Lillard and the Trail Blazers in the 2019 Western Conference Finals and swept them in four games. Lillard really struggled to score the ball efficiently from the field against Golden State, as he averaged 22.3 points per game for the series but converted a mere 37.1 percent of his field-goal attempts.
The report from Charania and Amick highlights the notion that the Heat were willing to give up a whole lot of assets in exchange for Lillard. A package of multiple first-round and second-round picks, along with Herro and Jović, is an attractive combination of draft capital and talented young players.