Damian Lillard trade to rival Bucks is a colossal defeat for the Miami Heat and Pat Riley | Opinion

 


Most everybody loses in the weird, protracted drama that was Damian Lillard’s monthslong maneuvering to get out of Portland.

But nobody loses in all this quite like the Miami Heat loses, and by extension that giant L on the Heat today is borne on the neck of team president Pat Riley like a heavy yoke.

The degrees of perception to reality hardly matter. All that does is that the Old Man and the Sea has lost another whale. And this one was casting for him, Lillard expressly saying he wanted only to be traded to Miami. Begging, demanding and all ways willing to end up with the Heat.

Lillard did everything but curl up inside a crate and have himself sent via Fed-Ex to the front steps of the arena on Biscayne Boulevard, delivery pre-paid.

At age 78, the last hurrah of Riley’s championship-gilded Hall of Fame career was coming to him on a proverbial platter.

How could anything possibly go wrong ... right?

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