{"id":136709,"date":"2025-04-28T15:03:29","date_gmt":"2025-04-28T19:03:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/?p=136709"},"modified":"2025-04-28T16:45:37","modified_gmt":"2025-04-28T20:45:37","slug":"lillards-achilles-injury-bucks-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/2025\/04\/28\/lillards-achilles-injury-bucks-future\/","title":{"rendered":"Damian Lillard\u2019s Achilles Injury Destroys Bucks&#8217; Present and Future"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Shams Charania announced Monday afternoon that Milwaukee Bucks star <a href=\"https:\/\/www.basketball-reference.com\/players\/l\/lillada01.html\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Damian Lillard<\/a> has been diagnosed with a torn Achilles tendon. Lillard will miss the remainder of the playoffs and likely part (or all) of next season for the Bucks. Lillard\u2019s injury not only essentially ends the <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/2025\/04\/27\/death-knell-in-bucks-season-after-damian-lillards-achilles-injury\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\">Bucks\u2019 season <\/a>but also brings a myriad of difficult decisions for the <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/2025\/04\/10\/bucks-giannis-antetokounmpo-message-front-office\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\">Bucks&#8217; front office<\/a> to address over the offseason. This Lillard injury update could be a turning point for the Bucks\u2019 franchise going forward, especially if their franchise star realizes he can&#8217;t win again in Milwaukee.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Just in: Milwaukee Bucks star Damian Lillard has been diagnosed with a torn left Achilles tendon, sources tell ESPN. MRI today revealed the severity. A devastating end to his season. <a  href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/ysZ0nw8gxW\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">pic.twitter.com\/ysZ0nw8gxW<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Shams Charania (@ShamsCharania) <a  href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/ShamsCharania\/status\/1916916082088030399?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">April 28, 2025<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<h2>Damian Lillard\u2019s Achilles Injury Destroys Bucks&#8217; Present and Future<\/h2>\n<h3><strong>The Bucks\u2019 Season is Over<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Bucks are now down 3-1 against the Indiana Pacers in their first-round playoff series. Lillard went down with a non-contact injury in the first quarter of Game 4, and the writing was on the wall. The Bucks were unable to rally behind their star&#8217;s exit and fell 129-103 to the Pacers, going down 1-3 in the series.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">They are on the brink of playoff elimination, and the news worsens. Now the Bucks won\u2019t have their second-best player to support <a href=\"https:\/\/www.basketball-reference.com\/players\/a\/antetgi01.html\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Giannis Antetokounmpo<\/a> in his attempt to upset the Pacers and make a playoff run. The Bucks were already going to have a difficult time making it out of the first round with their roster; without Lillard, it will be almost impossible.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><strong>The Lillard Trade Was a Failure<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Bucks won a championship with Antetokounmpo in 2021. Since then, they have had one conference semifinals loss and what will soon be three first-round exits in a row. This is not the type of contending that Antetokounmpo and Bucks fans were expecting after their 2021 ring.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Last year, the Bucks got desperate to get more talent around their star. They traded for Lillard in hopes that he could help put the Bucks back in a position to contend. The Antetokounmpo and Lillard combination never really clicked, and with the announcement of Lillard\u2019s torn achilles tendon, that experiment can officially be classified as a failure.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><strong>Changes are Coming in Milwaukee<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This moment marks a turning point for Milwaukee. Antetokounmpo has made it clear that he wants to be contending for a championship. If the Bucks aren\u2019t able to put a team around him that makes that possible, don\u2019t be surprised to hear about an Antetkounmpo trade request this offseason.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The power is in Antetokounmpo\u2019s hands. With Lillard likely to miss a significant amount (if not all) of next season, the Bucks won\u2019t be contending. The Bucks\u2019 front office also doesn\u2019t have many assets to work with to change the team\u2019s current trajectory. They are lacking both future draft capital as well as tradeable talent. With Lillard set to make $54 million next season and likely not help the team much, the Bucks are in a bad position.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Antetokounmpo\u2019s decision regarding his future in Milwaukee will likely determine the success of the franchise&#8217;s immediate future. Lillard will never be the same, and Antetokounmpo won\u2019t have his services for most of next season. It may be time for the Greek Freak to read the writing on the wall. He isn\u2019t winning again in Milwaukee, and if championships are his top goal, he may need a change of scenery.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Photo credit: \u00a9 Trevor Ruszkowski-Imagn Images<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Shams Charania announced Monday afternoon that Milwaukee Bucks star Damian Lillard has been diagnosed with a torn Achilles tendon. Lillard will miss the remainder of the playoffs and likely part (or all) of next season for the Bucks. Lillard\u2019s injury not only essentially ends the Bucks\u2019 season but also brings a myriad of difficult decisions [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5284,"featured_media":136713,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"1","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1608,15,62,3],"tags":[187,306],"class_list":["post-136709","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-basketball","category-bucks","category-nba","category-news","tag-damian-lillard","tag-giannis-antetokounmpo"],"modified_by":"Eamon Cassels, Editor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136709","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5284"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=136709"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136709\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":136714,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136709\/revisions\/136714"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/136713"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=136709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=136709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=136709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}