The fears, it turns out, were founded. Damian Lillard ruptured his left Achilles tendon on Sunday night — an injury that dramatically alters the career of a player named one of the 75 greatest in NBA history, and that may effectively end the Milwaukee Bucks’ chances of competing for NBA championships in what remains of Giannis Antetokounmpo’s prime.
In sober, on-court terms: Losing Lillard — 10th in the NBA in points and assists per game during the regular season, and 11th in offensive estimated plus-minus — takes away the Bucks’ best option for reducing the scoring and shot-creation burden on Antetokounmpo, who’s averaging a postseason-high 33.8 points per game.
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An inability to defend the younger, deeper, more explosive Pacers has been Milwaukee’s biggest problem in this first-round matchup, with Indiana scoring a scorching 120.2 points per 100 possessions through four games. Given how unlikely it would be for the older and slower Bucks to suddenly begin clamping down, though, their most realistic puncher’s chance at coming back from a 3-1 deficit rested with fighting fire with fire; without Dame, Milwaukee’s prospects of beating Indiana three straight times are virtually nil.
That would leave the Bucks without a playoff series victory in three years, having been surpassed in the Eastern Conference hierarchy by the Cavaliers, Celtics, Knicks and Pacers. It would render them unable to access the theory of contention on which the entire current state of the franchise is built — that the Giannis-Dame partnership could be potent enough to overwhelm even elite opposition — for at least a year, and possibly forever.
It would leave the Bucks scrambling to find avenues to improve a roster that will see Brook Lopez, Taurean Prince and Gary Trent Jr. hit unrestricted free agency, and that could see key reserves Bobby Portis and Kevin Porter Jr. join them by exercising their player options. There might not be very many pathways available, though: Thanks to the 2020 trade that brought Jrue Holiday to Milwaukee and the 2023 deal that shipped Holiday to Portland for Lillard, the Bucks have traded away control of their first-round pick in every season from now through 2030, and they only own a pair of future seconds, including the 47th pick in this June’s 2025 NBA draft.
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On top of that, Milwaukee is projected to have $133.7 million in salary on the books next season for just three players: Antetokounmpo, still an MVP-caliber performer under contract for two more seasons with a $62.8 million player option in the summer of 2027; Lillard, who is only now about to begin the two-year, $112.6 million maximum-salaried contract extension that the Trail Blazers gave him back in the summer of 2022; and forward Kyle Kuzma, whose play since coming over from Washington at February’s trade deadline in exchange for longtime franchise linchpin Khris Middleton has been nothing short of disastrous. It’s a nightmare roster-building scenario, a horrific stroke of bad luck resulting in the bill coming due on years of now-for-later moves — and the sort of thing that might make Milwaukee have to seriously contemplate the unthinkable.
On a very basic, human level: Lillard going down like this less than a week after returning from a blood clot in his right calf — a late-season affliction that many expected would sideline him for the remainder of the Bucks’ season, only for him to make a quicker recovery than “has [ever] been seen before” — is just unfathomably cruel.
“I knew it right away,” Bucks head coach Doc Rivers told reporters after Game 4. “I felt bad for him; the guy tried to come back for his team. I just felt bad for him.”
Damian Lillard appeared to be in disbelief after tearing his Achilles in Game 4. (Photo by Stacy Revere/Getty Images)
(Stacy Revere via Getty Images)
While he hadn’t played particularly well after spending more than a month in street clothes, shooting just 6-for-25 from the floor in Games 2 and 3, it was still remarkable to see Lillard make such a stunning and spirited comeback to a Bucks team fighting for its postseason life against the rival Pacers. Seeing him laid low just six minutes into Game 4 — the immediate reach for his heel, the stationary seated pose in the backcourt as play moved on without him, the inability to put any weight on that left leg as his teammates and coaches helped him off the court — was stomach-churning.
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“When you see a guy like that not able to walk on his own, you know this might be serious and then you kind of hope that it’s the best-case scenario,” Antetokounmpo told reporters after the game. “And for now, we just hope it’s the best-case scenario for him, for his health. That’s pretty much it. It’s tough.”
It evoked the heart-plunging brutality of seeing Kevin Durant work his way back from a calf strain to return to the Warriors in the middle of the 2019 NBA Finals … and then find himself, after just 12 minutes, in that same seated position, making that same reach for his heel, and facing the same long, unfathomably daunting road ahead.
How Durant walked that road offers a glimmer of hope in a dark moment for Lillard, the Bucks and NBA fans. After missing the entire 2019-20 NBA season recovering from his Achilles tear, Durant has averaged 27.9 points, 6.7 rebounds and 5.2 assists in 36.2 minutes per game on .645 true shooting across five post-injury seasons — nearly identical stats to what he’d produced in the decade before his rupture — with four All-Star nods, two All-NBA Second Team selections, and a pair of top-10 MVP finishes. Whatever other issues have attended KD’s last half-decade in Brooklyn, Phoenix and likely soon elsewhere, from a pure between-the-lines perspective, he has done the impossible: He resumed playing like Kevin Durant.
But cases like Durant — and, before him, Dominique Wilkins — very much represent exceptions to the established rule: that players who experience this particular injury are never really the same.
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While the 6-foot-11 Durant could always fall back on being able to tailor his game to be more like late-model Dirk Nowitzki if he lost a step athletically post-Achilles, the 6-foot-2 Lillard depends more on quickness, agility and the ability to suddenly change directions off the dribble to create space against longer defenders — all attributes that would seem less likely to bounce back on a surgically repaired Achilles. Perhaps more significant, though: While Durant was 30 when he sustained his injury, Lillard is less than three months from his 35th birthday.
Lillard is actually 54 days older than Kobe Bryant was when he tore his Achilles — a rupture that, like Lillard’s, came during the opening round of the 2013 NBA playoffs; that kept him on the shelf for nearly eight months before a brief return was curtailed by a fractured left knee; and from which he’d never fully bounce back to his Hall of Fame pre-injury form.
In the season before his injury, Bryant averaged 27.3 points on 46.3% shooting, 5.6 rebounds and 6.0 assists in 38.6 minutes per game — numbers that, on a per-minute/per-possession basis, are incredibly similar to Lillard’s this season. In the two seasons after his return, though, he averaged 19.2 points on 36.4% shooting, 4.4 rebounds and 3.8 assists in 30.4 minutes per game — the kind of sharp decline in production and effectiveness expected for players returning from this injury.
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Bryant did have his moments in the two seasons after his return: a 31-point triple-double in an overtime win over the Raptors, hanging 44 on Golden State and 38 on the Wolves, and, of course, the maximalist 60-point spectacle of his finale. For the most part, the version of Kobe we saw after the tear rarely resembled its superstar predecessor — as was the case for DeMarcus Cousins and John Wall, as has been the case for Klay Thompson, and as has long been the case for most who have experienced what’s considered to be the most devastating injury a basketball player can suffer.
That’s the challenge facing Lillard: a greater, more harrowing hurdle than any he’s encountered over the course of a Springfield-bound career that has featured nine All-Star berths, seven All-NBA selections and five top-eight finishes in MVP voting. The embrace of the grind carried Lillard from Oakland and Weber State to the ranks of the immortals, one of just 11 players ever with at least 22,000 points and 6,000 assists. Now, it’ll have to carry him even farther — on a journey that begins before he can even take a single step.
“It’s hard being in his position, but he’s one of the toughest, mentally toughest guys I’ve ever been around,” Antetokounmpo said. “And that’s why he is who he is, and I think he’s going to overcome every obstacle that’s going to be in front of him.”
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