At first, they thought it was the groin. That’s the ailment the Bucks listed for Damian Lillard on the injury report, coming off a dispiriting, “we have to have a meeting”-type of loss to the Warriors: right groin soreness, probable for Milwaukee’s next game, a nationally televised Thursday tilt against the Lakers.
Later that day, though, the issue was reclassified as soreness in the soleus muscle in his right calf — an update significant enough to knock him out of the lineup for what would wind up being a Bucks rout.
“I just know it popped up and, you know, didn’t do shootaround today, and so we just keep moving on,” Bucks head coach Doc Rivers told reporters.
When the calf issue led to two more absences, though — in Saturday’s win over the Kings and Monday’s loss to the Suns, after which Lillard proclaimed it “frustrating […] not being able to play [at] this point in the season” — Rivers spoke about Lillard’s situation in a tone that seemed ominous for what had been termed a day-to-day injury.
Asked if the veteran guard had been making progress, the coach told reporters, “No, obviously, because he’s not playing. So we’re just gonna keep monitoring it and hopeful that we’ll get more information about it … I know he saw some people, so we’re checking everything out.”
Thank God they did: Further testing revealed that what initially presented as soreness in that right calf was actually a deep vein thrombosis — the type of blood clot from which multiple athletes have suffered in the past, and that ended San Antonio Spurs phenom Victor Wembanyama’s season just last month.
“It’s unfortunate that something outside of my control would come up,” Lillard told NBA insider Chris Haynes. “Along with the Bucks’ medical staff, our priorities are to protect my health and safety. As much as I love basketball, I need to be there for my kids and my family. I’m grateful the Bucks acted quickly on this. They’ve been supportive and proactive throughout this process. I look forward to moving past this and continuing my career.”
Just when Dame will be able to do that, though, remains very much an open question.
While a league source told Sam Amick and Eric Nehm of The Athletic that there’s “a great deal of optimism that [Lillard] will return this season,” the medications that he’s taking — blood thinners to stabilize the clot — put him at “risk for increased bleeding” following any direct impact or laceration, and can “often result in considerable time lost,” according to injury expert Jeff Stotts of In Street Clothes, who has written about the condition in the past. And with just 20 days and 11 games remaining in their regular season, “considerable time” is a luxury the Bucks don’t have.
“Damian’s health is our No. 1 priority,” Bucks general manager Jon Horst said in a team statement. “We will support him as he moves through this weekly process of strict criteria to ensure that it is safe for him to return to play. Doctors have indicated that his situation is very unlikely to occur again. We are thankful that this was identified and medicated quickly, which helps with the recovery.”
In the grand scheme of things, obviously, exactly when Lillard is able to return to play is secondary to whatever immediate benefits the blood-thinning medication can provide in improving his overall health and well-being. In the here and now, though, an indefinite absence for the nine-time All-Star point guard deals one hell of a blow to a Milwaukee team in a dogfight in the middle of the Eastern Conference playoff picture.
The Bucks sit fifth in the East — two games behind the red-hot fourth-place Pacers, who’ve won five straight, and in a virtual tie with the surging Pistons, who won again Tuesday. Losing Lillard — their second-leading scorer at 24.9 points per game on 45/38/92 shooting splits, to go with 7.1 assists and 4.7 rebounds in 36.1 minutes a night — could put Milwaukee in danger of dropping all the way down to sixth, and potentially into a first-round matchup with a Knicks team that has blown the Bucks out twice in two meetings this season. (It remains to be seen, though, whether New York will have its All-Star point guard back in full form by the start of that potential series.)
The good news: They’ve fared relatively well without Lillard this season, going 8-5 in the 13 games he’s missed and outscoring opponents by 3.9 points per 100 non-garbage-time possessions with him off the floor. The bad news, though, is that the entire premise of this iteration of the Bucks being capable of returning to championship contention rests on Lillard and MVP candidate Giannis Antetokounmpo arriving at mid-April healthy and in rhythm — a prerequisite that now seems like an awfully big ask.
From the moment the Bucks swung the mega-deal to import Lillard from Portland on the eve of training camp in 2023, they’ve been committed to several big bets: that an offensive attack built around the Giannis-Dame two-man game would be potent enough to overwhelm even elite defenses; that Lillard’s shot-making and on-ball facilitation would be able to ease Antetokounmpo’s offensive burden and prop up weaker Milwaukee lineups when Giannis was off the floor; and that Dame’s gifts as a crunch-time creator can get the Bucks over the finish line late in tight games. This season, though, those bets have not paid off.
The Bucks rank just 12th in offensive efficiency, and have scored like the NBA’s seventh-best offense — good, but not elite — in Giannis-Dame minutes. They’ve struggled mightily against the best of the best, going 11-18 against teams with a .500 record or better, 4-17 against teams with top-10 point differentials, and just 2-12 combined against the Cavaliers, Celtics, Knicks, Thunder, Rockets and Nuggets — the top three seeds in each conference. And even with Dame on hand to command the attack, close-and-late offense has been the Bucks’ Achilles heel all season; only the Miami Heat have mustered fewer points per possession when the score’s within five points in the final five minutes than the Bucks.
Without Lillard — who ranks ninth this season in offensive plus-minus — those offensive issues figure to grow even more onerous. Milwaukee has scored a measly 107.6 points-per-100 when both Antetokounmpo and Lillard are off the floor this season, according to Cleaning the Glass; only the hapless Wizards have posted a worse offensive rating over the course of the full season. And with longtime franchise linchpin Khris Middleton shipped to Washington at the trade deadline and key bucket-getting reserve Bobby Portis still serving a 25-game suspension for violating the NBA’s anti-drug policy, there’s no steady hand for Rivers to toss the keys to when the Bucks need a basket in those moments.
The Bucks will have to hope that trade-deadline additions Kyle Kuzma (shooting 42.9% from the field and 29.4% from 3-point range with a near 1-to-1 assist-to-turnover ratio since arriving) and Kevin Porter Jr. can pick up a larger share of the shot-creation slack in Lillard’s absence. And that about-to-turn-37-year-old center Brook Lopez (who’s scored 20 or more points just 14 times this season, with four of them coming in the last two weeks) is ready for some more throwback post touches. And that complementary wings Taurean Prince, Gary Trent Jr. and A.J. Green can get on a heater and knock down heaping helpings of the tasty perimeter looks that Giannis creates for them on a nightly basis.
Perhaps more than that, they’ll have to hope that playing giant-sized lineups featuring Lopez, Antetokounmpo and Kuzma up front, with Prince as a small-ball 4 masquerading as a massive 2 in the backcourt next to one of Porter, Trent, Green, Ryan Rollins and Andre Jackson Jr. — all of whom stand 6-foot-4 or taller — will give them enough defensive oomph to make up for what they’re missing on the other end. Such lineups have defended at an elite level this season, and while that’s come in an admittedly small sample — barely 700 possessions — it might be the Bucks’ best chance of survival. Smother passing lanes, dominate the glass, blot out the sun, play bully-ball through Giannis, and let the basketball gods sort ’em out.
That is, more or less, how the Bucks won the 2021 NBA championship; it’s pretty damn tough to do, though. That’s why they went out and got Dame — to be able to field the sort of offensive firepower that makes it all a little easier. Instead, yet again — after losing Middleton to a knee injury in the 2022 postseason, after losing Giannis early in 2023’s opening round, and after missing Giannis and Dame for parts of their 2024 playoff series — it’s only getting harder for the Bucks, at the hardest time of year to manage it.
The hope is that Lillard is able to return to full health in time to give Milwaukee the chance to see its vaunted partnership in full-fledged postseason action. The fear, though: due to both the circumstances you can’t control and the ones you can, the Bucks’ best-laid plans have already gone astray.
