Heat, Blazers have not talked about Damian Lillard

The Miami Heat may not be as desperate to trade for Damian Lillard as Heat fans seem to be.

While the Portland Trail Blazers have engaged with several teams about a Damian Lillard trade, one team that has yet to reach out is the Miami Heat.

According to reporting by ESPN, the Heat and Blazers have not spoken about a Lillard trade since July and have yet to discuss a deal as training camp looms in early October. Meanwhile, the Blazers have ramped up efforts to trade Lillard and have had discussions with other teams.

“Those talks have intensified this week about Damian Lillard but still there is no trade imminent,” ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski said Friday afternoon. “We talked about this throughout the summer, that this would pick up once we got past Labor Day and the opening of training camp loomed. And that’s exactly what’s happened. You have Portland trying to talk to teams not only interested in Lillard, but lots of teams that would like to get in on a bigger deal.

“Portland is exhausting all of those conversations this week and they are certainly behaving like a team that wants to get a deal done before training camp,” he continued. “So far the one element that has not been a part of these talks is the Miami Heat.”

In a separate segment, ESPN’s Brian Windhorst echoed the same reporting, that the Heat and Blazers have not spoken about Lillard since July.

He also said, “I don’t think the Heat are desperate at all to trade for Damian Lillard… I don’t think that the Heat and Trail Blazers have been engaged in talks at all on almost any level for quite some time. That could change very quickly.”

The Miami Herald’s Barry Jackson added to Windhorst’s report on X (formerly Twitter) that the Heat are confident in the additions they made to last season’s NBA Finals team and are not as desperate to trade for Lillard as many Heat fans seem to be.

There’s no doubt the Heat are interested in Lillard, but it appears that they are only interested in trading for the 33-year-old All-Star at a certain price and have not felt the need to call the Blazers with a better offer. The Blazers have not called the Heat, either. Instead, Portland’s GM Joe Cronin is exploring trades with other teams.

Teams believed to have been in contact with the Blazers in some capacity include the Phoenix Suns, Toronto Raptors and Chicago Bulls. However, no concrete deals have yet to emerge from those talks.

As Wojnarowski and Windhorst said, the situation can change with a single conversation. Perhaps Portland’s string of calls lead them to Miami, or maybe the Heat feel the pressure to get something done.  For now, Lillard’s trade request remains unresolved.