Lillard submits a request to the Blazers! Personally, I hope to join the Heat Four teams will start chasing
On July 2, Beijing time, according to a number of reporters successively, Blazers star Lillard officially submitted a trade application to the team. Shams then revealed that the Heat and Nets will be Lillard's main suitors, and Lillard is inclined to join last season's Eastern Conference champion Miami Heat.
Immediately after the famous WOJ revealed that the Heat, Clippers and 76ers will be three teams interested in exploring a Lillard trade, and the Blazers are expected to want to get young players and draft assets in the trade. Combined with various news reports, the current situation is that the Heat, Nets, Clippers and 76ers are chasing Lillard.
Lillard's trade request will undoubtedly have a huge impact on the entire dreary free trade market, according to reporter Keith Smith, two executives said that the entire free trade market will be in a state of stagnation, and the rest of the team will have to wait until Lillard and Harden have the final whereabouts before the rest of the team makes the next move. You can imagine how interesting Lillard's whereabouts are.
According to Yahoo Sports reporter Vincent Goodwill, the 76ers are not on Lillard's radar, and he will only choose the Heat and Nets. Reporter Tim Reynolds revealed that Lillard's top target has always been Miami, and he has been discussing with Heat players over the past few days how to implement the team.
As a strong contender for Lillard, the Heat can offer the Blazers two first-round picks, young players such as Hilo, Jovic, Coleb Martin, this year's No. 18 pick Jaime Jax and other players as trade chips, who need $41.5 million in assets to equalize under the current salary structure.
The Nets, on the other hand, have seven first-round picks and have this year's No. 21 pick Crawney and No. 22 pick Whitehead as the team's main trade chips. Under the Nets' current salary structure, they would need at least $36.3 million in assets to match Lillard's contract.
Lillard has played for the Trail Blazers for the past 11 seasons since being selected by the Blazers with the 6th pick in the '12 draft. He was a seven-time All-Star, a seven-time All-Star finisher, was named one of the league's 75th anniversary stars in '21, and reached the Western Conference Finals with a playoff best.
Lillard started 58 games for the Trail Blazers last season, averaging 32.2 points, 4.8 rebounds and 7.3 assists per game, hitting 4.2 three-pointers per game. Among them, he scored 13 three-pointers against the Rockets, scoring 71 points, setting a new career high and tying the active single-game scoring record. In the end, the Blazers finished 13th in the West last season and missed the playoffs, and the battle with the Jazz on March 23, Beijing time, is likely to be the last game of Lillard's Blazers' career.
Lillard has four years left on his contract that expires in the summer of '27 and will earn $45.64 million a year next season. He holds the Blazers' four all-time team records: total points, points per game, total three-point field goal and total free throw shot.
If Lillard eventually leaves the Blazers, he will end his one-man-one-city journey, leaving only Curry and Klay on the same team for more than 11 years.