Milwaukee Bucks fans have prayed for times like these.
On Thursday afternoon, ESPN’s Shams Charania dropped a bombshell injury update on point guard Damian Lillard, who had been ruled out with deep vein thrombosis in his calf and has not played since March 18. According to Charania, Lillard has been cleared of his blot clot and is no longer on blood-thinning medications. He’ll still miss at least Game 1 of the Bucks’ first-round series against the Indiana Pacers on Saturday as he ramps up for an eventual return, but it’s just about the best prognosis that Milwaukee could’ve asked for. As Charania noted, even Lillard’s doctors have never seen a patient recover from a blood clot this quickly.
The news comes at a welcome time for the Bucks.
Their ceiling is obviously higher with Lillard healthy, even though they went 10-4 with the league’s fifth-best offensive rating after his injury. That resilience can mostly be attributed to Giannis Antetokounmpo finding yet another gear, especially as a playmaker: the two-time MVP averaged an incredible 30.3 points, 11.1 rebounds, and 8.5 assists per game over the last 14 games of the season. But the slight uptick in minutes and extreme offensive burden threatens to put a toll on Antetokounmpo’s body, and the Greek Freak has missed time due to injury in each of the last two postseasons.
Even at the age of 34, Lillard still has it, especially on offense. He averaged 24.9 points, 4.7 rebounds, and 7.1 assists per game this season, posting the fourth-highest effective field goal percentage of his career and making his seventh All-Star team in eight seasons. By box plus-minus, he still ranked in the league’s top 20 despite being the 25th-oldest player in the league. There were some signs of decline — Milwaukee was 4.1 points per 100 possessions better with Lillard off the floor than on it — but the spacing that his elite shooting provides should give some of the Bucks’ role players easier shots. It’s not a coincidence that the eight-most frequent three-man combinations featuring Lillard were all more accurate from deep than their opponents.
Can the Bucks win the championship?
Right now, Milwaukee has just +10000 odds of winning the NBA Finals at DraftKings Sportsbook, including just +135 odds to advance past the red-hot Pacers. The fact that Indiana is favored makes sense; it has gone 34-14 with the league’s sixth-best net rating since January 1, and between Pascal Siakam and Myles Turner, it can effectively approximate the two-man combination of Siakam and Marc Gasol that somewhat stymied Antetokounmpo in the 2019 Eastern Conference Finals. But Lillard has been pretty effective against Andrew Nembhard, who’s most likely to guard him in the playoffs, and he can tire Nembhard out enough to make him less effective on offense. Doc Rivers also might hunt for switches to get Tyrese Haliburton on Lillard, preying on the Pacers star’s defensive weaknesses in a way that he can’t do with Ryan Rollins.
The Bucks haven’t really seen a healthy version of their core with Lillard in meaningful games, between Antetokounmpo’s injury last season, Lillard’s blood clot, and Bobby Portis’ 25-game suspension. But in 2021, they won a championship with a similar roster — Antetokounmpo, who’s arguably a better player now; Jrue Holiday, a defensive-oriented star with some offensive limitations; a shooting specialist in young Donte DiVincenzo; Khris Middleton, then squarely in his prime; and elite rim protector Brook Lopez. Lopez is older and less effective now, and Kuzma is nowhere near Middleton’s caliber, but Taurean Prince drains 43.9% of his triples, six percentage points higher than DiVincenzo that season. Portis, who wasn’t much of a factor in that playoff run, has improved since then. This Milwaukee team isn’t as good overall as its championship outfit was, but the shades of its triumph are there. Lillard’s playoff and clutch legacy is overblown, but in the aggregate, he’s a slight playoff riser.
If Milwaukee makes it past Indiana, Cleveland Cavaliers point guard Darius Garland hasn’t proven that he can slow down Lillard, and while the Boston Celtics’ Holiday has, he’s dealt with some injury concerns this season, as has Jaylen Brown. Who knows if both will even be available for a hypothetical Eastern Conference Finals? Anything can happen in the deeper rounds of the playoffs, especially with the Bucks rostering the best player in the conference.
Lillard’s lack of a ring — as well as his blowing four straight double-digit leads to the Golden State Warriors in the 2019 Western Conference Finals — hurts his Hall of Fame legacy for now. But he’s never had a real chance to make a playoff run as a second fiddle to the second-best player in the world.
Without Lillard, Milwaukee is first-round fodder. With him, its championship aspirations are legitimate, even if not realistic. Today’s news gives him and Antetokounmpo the chance to try.
