Finally made this decision, ignored what others said, and Lillard finally applied for a trade.
There are some indications about Lillard's application for a trade in the summer of 2023, but not much. In recent years, Lillard has generally only done two things in the summer, one is to show loyalty, and the other is to upgrade the lineup. He is like the middle-aged woman in a family that has experienced many vicissitudes, every once in a while he will nag his husband to rebel, "I sacrificed so much for this family, if it weren't for ..." At this time, the pioneer will consciously play the silent husband, buy a 120 yuan Taobao explosive T-shirt for his wife to show comfort, and then hide in the kitchen room and turn on the range hood and light a jade stream, "Make do with it, you can leave the land, there is already her name on the real estate certificate." ”
But sometimes the fragmentation of a family does not have much foreshadowing, and every repetition in life deepens the rift that has already arisen. Middle-aged women filing for divorce often do not stem from a landslide quarrel, but more likely to occur on a sparse and ordinary summer afternoon in the south, when the air conditioner suddenly breaks and the man sits there and says that it will be good to open the window and repair it tomorrow. She saw him in his vest and his head bowed to rub his feet, and a small irregular area above his head reflected the wisdom light that should be at this age, and following the light, it was the closed door of her son's room and the fishing gear randomly placed at the door. The plain scene was so thrilling in her eyes, and at this moment she suddenly found that all the pretenses of ordinary life were just masturbation on the literary level, and it was time to end it all.
The story of Lillard and the Blazers ends no more than that.
Before the news of the application for a trade was exposed, there were trade rumors around Lillard again, and the Blazers used the No. 3 pick to select the 1.88-meter-tall Henderson in the draft, which caused people to think infinitely. Despite what the lads say that Lillard and I are a match made in heaven, discerning people know that this is mostly showing emotional intelligence to sponsors and fans. As soon as the 18-year-old LeBron entered Cleveland, he publicly said that he would help Ricky Davis make a contribution.
If the rookie's endorsement is nothing to fear, the Blazers also met with the Lillard team 3 days before the trade market opened. After the meeting, team manager Joe Cronin issued a statement saying that he had communicated with Lillard's team and would continue to build a championship team around Lillard.
Insiders reported on the meeting, saying the "moderate" Lillard was not seeking a trade and did not want to put pressure on the team, and he wanted to see what the team could do in the free agent market.
What to do?
Or what does Lillard expect the team to do?
Maybe it's Dream Green. The news about Lillard and Chasing Dream eating and not eating some time ago probed their brains on the Internet, creating an atmosphere where Fang La thought that he could dominate the world if he got the iron bull, which was very strange. But even if it is a dream, Lillard can't ask for it. As soon as the free agent market opened, Chasing Dream received a four-year, $100 million return to the Golden State, and I don't know if Lillard's meal money Blazers will give a report.
The next Blazers' operation is very simple, the most important one is that they gave Jerami Grant a five-year, 160 million contract.
The free agency market is still lively this year, but it's mostly Houston, Los Angeles and Phoenix, and Portland has nothing.
Chris Haynes, a journalist who boasts a close relationship with Lillard, cheered Lillard on the sidelines: "The Rice doesn't want a luxurious lineup, it doesn't want a three-star lineup, it just wants to be on a team that has a real chance to reach the championship." ”
Obviously, there is no three-star lineup, never. The Blazers talk about building a championship team for Lillard, and maybe they've actually made some phone calls to see if they can get some bargains, including maybe some contact with Dreams.
On paper, they're not completely without chips, nor are they without space, including the legendary trade of Henderson for Paul George — but everything is as the last deal rumors show us: the Blazers have only superficially approached the possibility.
Shallow contact + renewal of Grant≈ 120 yuan Taobao explosive T-shirt.
Lillard watched for 1 day and he understood.
While the Blazers sat there lightly picking their feet, the Heat let Vincent, Strus and Oladipo go on the other side of the market. And Lillard's next home is the Heat.
Now we can finally talk about how Lillard and the Blazers story ends.
Generally speaking, when we talk about a player's career, we usually have to count his honors, the number of All-Stars, the best team, the most valuable, and talk about championships. As the leader of the team, the number of championships can generally reflect the highest team value of a player, and championships and victories in the arena are topics that cannot be avoided. But when it comes to whether a player's career is successful or not, the conclusion may vary depending on the angle from which you look at it.
Lillard is now 33 years old, has as many championship rings as I have, and his career is not over, and it is unknown whether he will eventually be able to wear one, but I can define him from another perspective now: his career has been successful.
The angle I stand on is simple, it's to make money. The NBA is a professional arena, and since it comes to careers, money is a topic that cannot be bypassed. For individual players, how much money he can earn in his career is of course an important criterion for evaluating the success of his personal career. Of course, we were taught that this is a vulgar set of values, but I feel that you can choose noble values and treat money as dung, but you can't stop others from wandering in the dung.
Last summer, Lillard successfully renewed the team's top salary for another 2 years, and counting the original contract, Lillard can still get more than 60 million by the age of 37, and has a player option. Even if the new broadcast contract in 2025 can hold the future salary cap to $171 million, more than 60 million will still be the starting salary price of a 35% maximum salary contract, and it is difficult to imagine that a 37-year-old can still be regarded as a player who can really contribute on the field with this kind of salary.
What is a "player who can really contribute"? It is not that the player can still play his residual heat, but that the basketball attributes of this player are far lower than his trading attributes. At that age level, who occupies such a large salary space and has not been used as a mascot or licensed by the team, there may be only a few Jordan, LeBron, and Kobe in modern history. Whether Lillard will suddenly rush to this level after the age of 33, I think there is not much chance, after all, he is not high. It is more likely that he will become an "expired contract" that year, just like Paul today, or even worse, after all, Paul's contract is not fully guaranteed, the gameplay is richer, and the next home experience is better.
But that's not what I'm really interested in, a player making the most money for himself, that's fine. It's not just that, it's just something to admire. What I'm really interested in is how Lee Coach will round out his logic, and I think that's probably what a lot of people are really interested in Lillard trading.
After Haslem retired, Beal had been traded, and when Lillard left, there were only three people left in the league. The archway about "loyalty" finally settled in the Golden State. But I guess the Golden State doesn't really care, and the story they have told in the past decade has gone far beyond the shallow concept of "talking about loyalty in the arena".
After all, you know the ball like you, and have seen too many cases of teams ruthlessly abandoning players, and if there really is equal dignity in the workplace, then loyalty should indeed be a two-way street. But Lillard's situation is completely different from many players who have been ruthlessly abandoned by the team. He is one of the few loyal representatives of the league, and that's all, the key is that for the matter of "loyalty", Lillard not only has road confidence, he also has theoretical confidence. You should have heard the following resounding Ritchie statements over the years:
"A calm ocean does not make a skilled sailor."
"I'm not going to join a team with three All-Stars."
"I want to go back home and play with the kids, go to my mom's house with her, play with my cousins, talk to my grandmother on the phone, and not sit there and think, I'm going to have to leave Portland."
"I don't need championship rings to prove myself, I understand that the ultimate goal is to win a championship, but you can't make it seem like anything else and the game doesn't mean anything."
"Be wary of people who let you go, they're not good people. Don't always think the grass on the other side is tastier. ”
"I'm going to pass on everything I've learned to young people, and the job of young people is to do it for the next person."
"Success does not define us, how to face failure can define our quality."
"I prefer the feeling of climbing out of the bottom rather than huddling to win."
"They judge us by how many rings, playoff successes. I think I've had playoff success, I just didn't win it. But other than that, I've had a lot of achievements: 6 All-Stars, 6 All-Star teams, and a lot of people make it to All-Star regularly, but not always to the All-Star Team. So 6 All-Star Team in 9 years, 6 All-Stars, and the Western Conference Finals, I've averaged more than 25 points per game in the last 6-7 years, which speaks volumes. ”
But now Lillard has also applied for a trade.
Naturally, there will be fans who seek justice, running to Twitter to say that many fans attack Lillard for no reason, and the Blazers' current roster is close to a young rebuild, and did not create a championship lineup for Lillard.
Lillard may have paid for the Blue Label, after all, he could find this one on so many tweets and retweet it, with the caption: "It's my nature, I like to hear attacks from fans, am I misleading them?" Or anyone? Please let me know. ”
So did the dignified Lillard mislead anyone? My friend, the answer is in the wind.
The dignified Lillard did not mislead anyone, he just used practical actions to make choices that were not consistent with his past propaganda. He chose to spend the calmer ocean, and after reaching the bottom of the valley, he took the cable car directly to the summit, where the grass looked more tender. Now that Lillard is saying that he is going to chase a championship, people are still around him saying that he should have left long ago, and I don't know if Lillard has changed his character with these people now.
The dignified Lillard did not mislead anyone. He just held the banner of loyalty, insisted that he wouldn't leave Portland, insisted that championships couldn't define himself, then didn't choose to leave when the team changed course in 2021, and then got a super pension top salary in 2022 — something only the Blazers could offer him. If he had left a year earlier, no team would have offered him such an extension.
But I said I don't care how Lillard gets his big contract, I care about Lillard's theory of loyalty. I still think Lillard's theory of loyalty is correct, because the basis of this theory is not driven by emotions, but driven by reality, and the core logic is that a star who becomes the absolute core of the parent team not only gets a big contract, but also gets a lot of extra respect and protection. Once they choose to leave, it's hard for them to get that extra love.
This is a point proven by history, except for a very few strong people who cross the times, the superstars who leave the nest will soon become licensed, leaving Moses Malone in Houston, Howard in Orlando, leaving Oklahoma's Weizhong...
Even not just emotional appeals and media protection, even money can be damaged, if Wei Zhong remained in Oklahoma, it would be difficult for him to get closer to the championship, but he would definitely not receive a 2-year 8 million base salary this year.
Of course, I didn't mention another name, because it was another story, an urban legend that was almost the opposite of Lillard's story.
What really sets Lillard's story apart from these out-of-nest superstars is that he literally earns his entire career without worrying about money.
As for the rest that is bound to be lost, if he doesn't win the championship in a new place, if he doesn't have a good time in his new place, if Adebayo suddenly leaves the team for two and a half years because of his sisters' birthdays, and Gibba can't play at home in Miami because he refuses to get the HPV vaccine, how will Leigh review his remarks before the summer of 2023?
In fact, it is nothing, Coach Li just proved the correctness of his previous theory with practical actions, and then he can act like a teacher who has solved the wrong problem knocking on the blackboard and telling the following confused students: Look, this is the wrong solution.
"You all said I should go, I said I shouldn't go, and now I prove to you that I am right and you are all wrong!"
If you accept this setting of killing and taking righteousness, it seems to be quite emotional.
In any case, Lillard eventually applied for a deal. The duplicitous and affectionate promises of the past will all go away with the hot wind, as for whether the trailblazers have been touched, will they be afraid, will they be afraid of a sharp box office crash? Will they be afraid that young people will not be able to support them? According to my observations, these things are better than the family life of masturbating in the dullness that you know but do not want to pierce. Lillard is not afraid of what he once said was the "consequences of disloyalty." Of course, the Blazers are not afraid either, they may have been waiting for this moment to appear, just waiting for Lillard to speak first. The only thing that pioneers are afraid of now, Liang Jingru has long since debunked:
I'm most afraid that you will suddenly say that you want to give up.