The Portland Trail Blazers have already been through a hell of an offseason, including a possible Damian Lillard scare. The superstar point guard recently tweeted some disgruntled messages following the backlash that he faced for his part in the Chauncey Billups hiring, that along with the Chris Haynes report, spooked Blazers fans into thinking that Lillard might be asking out of Rip City.
While the rumors have subsided pretty quickly and it seems that Dame is here to stay, the controversy did generate a lot of media attention, which in turn amassed a lot of trade proposals from basketball writers across the globe.
While trade proposal pieces are always fun, many of them are laughably bad— many of you have fervently disagreed with some of my own ideas. When it comes to a player of Lillard’s caliber, every team wants to jump in on the discussion. This desire to add a generational player while also maintaining a core good enough to compete for a title with said player in tow, results in some pretty egregious trade offers.
There may not be a good trade package for Damian Lillard
Through the lens of the Portland Trail Blazers administration and fans, there may not be a trade good enough for Damian Lillard. For all intents and purposes, the Blazers brass and their faithful expect the team to continue to compete for a championship next season.
Since Rip City is continuing their title chase, the only trade that wouldn’t be a step backwards would be a straight superstar-for-superstar swap. That being said, Lillard is at least a top 10 player in the NBA and on any given night, can put up the best performance of any player in the league.
The Blazers here aren’t looking to reset their roster and rebuild, so almost all Lillard trade proposals will look bad through that lens. Given that, let’s take a look at some of the worst Dame trade proposals on the internet.