The NBA world ensued chaos on Wednesday when it was reported that the Portland Trail Blazers agreed to send Damian Lillard to the Milwaukee Bucks in a three-team trade that also involved the Phoenix Suns.
After months of reports and rumors, the Trail Blazers’ all-time leading scorer will leave Portland following 11 seasons. This comes off the heels of arguably his best season yet, where he earned All-NBA honors.
Buy Thunder TicketsThe Trail Blazers received Jrue Holiday, Deandre Ayton, Toumani Camara, Milwaukee’s 2029 unprotected first-round draft pick and unprotected Milwaukee swap rights in 2028 and 2030.
The Suns received Jusuf Nurkic, Grayson Allen, Nassir Little and Keon Johnson.
The drastic move means the Bucks pushed all their chips into the middle of the table for this upcoming season. After Giannis Antetokounmpo — who is only under contract for two more seasons — has said multiple times during this offseason that he’s willing to leave the Bucks to contend for championships, the Bucks have gone all-in with its current core.
The Bucks now enter the 2023-24 season as one of the title favorites. Considering their entire rotation — including their best four players — are pushing their 30s, it’s now or never for them to see if they can win a second championship with Antetokounmpo.
So what does this mean for the Oklahoma City Thunder? Well, not a whole lot on a surface level.
OKC doesn’t own any future first-round picks from either the Bucks, Trail Blazers or Suns — which means there’s no real interest level for this trade to work out one way or the other.
In terms of other potential domino effects of this blockbuster deal, this could increase the odds that Antekounmpo leaves the Bucks, which means he could land on the Thunder via a trade.
While the Bucks will be steller this season and likely next, the long-term future looks murky at best. 32-year-old Khris Middleton and 35-year-old Brook Lopez have recently shown signs of decline.
At 33 years old, Lillard’s prime could also be ticking away. There’s also a high likelihood that the remainder of his deal — four years, $216.2 million — badly ages and turns into one of the worst contracts in the league.
And looking at their current roster, the Bucks don’t possess any real young intriguing talent.
If the Bucks fail to have playoff success in the next two seasons, then there’s a high chance a 31-year-old Antetokounmpo declines his $51.9 million 2025-26 player option and leaves.
If the Bucks feel like that’ll happen, then there’s a chance they decide to jumpstart their rebuild and trade the two-time MVP winner before he leaves for nothing.
If that happens, no team is better positioned to offer the Bucks a Godfather-esque offer of draft picks and young players than the Thunder.
Adding Antetokounmpo to the Thunder has already been discussed on a national level, this Lillard trade adds another interesting wrinkle to those hypotheticals.
Another way this trade affects the Thunder is that it essentially knocks the Trail Blazers out as a competing team for the foreseeable future, which is good news for OKC as it means they’ll be favored to win all four of their matchups for the next couple of seasons.
The Trail Blazers already have a young cornerstone in Scoot Henderson established, so this rebuild likely won’t take several seasons. But for now, the Thunder should be favored to win all four divisional games for the foreseeable future.
