What does the brutal injury of Damian Lillard mean for bucks and their star guard

It turns out that fears were founded. Damian Lillard tore his left Achilles tendon on Sunday evening – an injury that sharply changes his career of a player named one of the 75 greatest in the history of the NBA and can effectively put an end to the chances of Miluo Bax for the competition for the NBA championships that remains from Prime’s Prime’s Giannis Antetokounmpo.

In sober terms on the court: Lillarda loss of the 10th place in the NBA with glasses and gear for the game during the regular season and the 11th in the offensive, evaluated by the plus minus, is collecting the best option for reducing the burden on the clogging and roles for antito-KunMPO, which gains an average of 33.8 points per game.

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The inability to protect young, deeper, more explosive Pisers was the biggest problem in Miluoka in this match in the first round, and Indiana scored 120.2 points for 100 possessions in four games. Given how unlikely, it was unlikely that the old and more slow money suddenly began to clamp, however, their most realistic chance to return from a shortage with a score of 3: 1, which remains the struggle of fire; Without a lady, the prospects of Miluoka to beat the Indiana for three time in a row almost zero.

This would leave a Bax without a victory in the play -off series in three years, surpassing cavaliers, Celtics, Nix and Pacyers in the hierarchy of the eastern conference. This would make them incapable of gaining access to the theory of disputes, in which the entire current state of the franchise is built that the Jannis-Dame partnership can be powerful enough to stun even an elite opposition-as for at least a year and, possibly, forever.

This would leave a baks to find avenue to improve the list in which Brooke Lopez, Tauran Prince and Gary Trent, Jr., will fall into an unlimited free agency and could see the reserves of Bobby Portis and Kevin Porter, the youngest. There cannot be a lot of ways, although: thanks to the trade in 2020, which brought Holidei to Miluooki and the 2023 deal, which sent the holiday to Portland for Lillard, Baks exchanged control of their first round this season until 2030, and they have only a couple of future seconds, including the 47th choice in June 2025.

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In addition, in the next season, Miluoi will have a salary of 133.7 million dollars. The United States next season is only three players: Antetokounmpo, still an MVP-rib artist under a contract for two more seasons with a player option of 62.8 million dollars. USA in the summer of 2027; Lillard, who is Only now It is going to begin a two -year contract of a contract in the amount of 112.6 million dollars. USA. Trail Blaunt gave him in the summer of 2022; And the forward Kyle Kuzm, whose game has since come from Washington at the end of trade in February in exchange for a long -standing franchise of Lynchpin Khris Middleton, was nothing more than catastrophic. This is a scenario for building nightmares, a terrible blow of failure, as a result of which the bill will be received for many years, which are now for world movements, and that which can make Miluoi seriously think about unthinkable.

At a very simple, human level: Lillard is falling, as less than a week after the return of blood from the clot in his right calf at the end of the season, which many expected that many expected the remaining part of the Bax season, only for him to make faster than “ever (ever) was not seen before”-it is just inappropriately inappropriately.

“I immediately understood this,” the head coach of “Bax” Doc Rivers told reporters after the game 4. “I was bad because of him; The guy tried to return to his team. I just felt bad for him. ”

While he did not play especially well, having spent more than a month in street clothing, shooting only 6 to 25 from gender in games 2 and 3, it was still wonderful that Lillard was doing such an amazing and energetic return to the Baks team, fighting his post -zone life against competing Pacers. Seeing that he had only six minutes in the game 4-miserable reach of his heel, a stationary pose of sitting in the rear, when the game was moving without him, the inability to gain weight on this left leg when his teammates and coaches helped him to remove the platform and was excited.

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“When you see such a guy, you are not able to walk yourself, you know that it can be serious, and then you hope that this is the best scenario,” Antetokounmpo told reporters after the game. “And while we just hope that this is the best scenario for him, for his health. This is large. It’s complicated”.

This caused heartbreaking cruelty when Kevin Durant returned from the tension of the calf to return to the soldiers in the middle of the 2019 NBA finals … And then, after 12 minutes, in the same sitting position, making the same achievement of his heel and encountering the same long, inappropriate frightening road ahead.

How Durant passed, this road gives the problem of hope at a dark moment for Lillard, bucks and NBA fans. Having missed the whole season of the NBA 2019-20, recovering after its Achilles tears, Durant scored an average of 27.9 points, 6.7 rebounds and 5.2 programs in 36.2 minutes for the game for 0.645 true shooting in five seasons after an injury, identical statistical statistical indicators before he released in the fact that he released him in A ten -year version. No matter what other problems the last half -year -old in Brooklyn, Phoenix and, probably, in the near future, from a clean point of view between the line, he made the impossible: he resumed Playing like Kevin Durant.

But such cases as Durant – and before him, Dominic Wilkins – are a lot of exceptions to the established rule: that players who experience this specific injury are never the same.

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While a 6-foot 11-foot durant could always return to the opportunity to adapt his game in order to be more like the late model of Dirk Novitsky, if he lost a step of sports after Achilles, Lillard 6 feet 2 depends on the speed, dexterity and ability to suddenly change directions from a drop in order to create a space against more long-term attributes that would seem less likely that they would seem less likely that they will be in attributes. Perhaps more significant, although: although Durant was 30 years old when he was injured, Lillard less than three months from his 35th birthday.

Lillard is actually 54 days older than Kobi Bryant when he was torn his Achilles – a gap, which, like Lillard, occurred during the first round of the play -off NBA 2013; This kept him on the shelf for almost eight months before a short return was reduced by a fracture of the left knee; And from which he will never completely bounce into his shape of the Hall of Glory.

In the season, before the injury, Brian scored an average of 27.3 points when shooting 46.3%, 5.6 rebounds and 6 programs for 38.6 minutes per game-read, which for a minute/Babolists this season are incredibly similar to Lillard. Within two seasons after his return, he scored an average of 19.2 points when shooting 36.4%, 4.4 selection and 3.8 transfers for 30.4 minutes per game – this is a sharp decrease in production and efficiency expected for players returning from this injury.

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Bryant did Get it in two seasons after his return: a 31-ok triple double in the overtime victory over the “predators”, hanging 44 on Golden Stat and 38 on the wolves, and, of course, the maximalist sight of his final. For the most part, the Kobe version, which we saw after the tear rarely resembled his predecessor of the superstar – as in the case of Demarkus Kuzens and John Wallo, as was the case with Klai Thompson, and, as long as it was in the case of the majority who was considered what was considered the most terrible injury that the player could suffer in basketball.

This is a challenge facing Lillard: a greater, more painful obstacle than any that he encounters during a career associated with the Springfield, which shown nine All-STAR berths, seven ALL-NBA elections and the five best eighty in the MVP vote. The Grind association transferred Lillard from Auckland and Weber to the ranks of the immortals, one of 11 players with at least 22,000 points and 6000 programs. Now he will have to carry him even further – in a trip, which begins even before he can even take one step.

“It is difficult to be in his position, but he is one of the most complex, mentally tough guys with whom I was liba,” said Antetokunmpo. “And that is why he is what he is, and I think that he will overcome all the obstacles that will be in front of him.”