Dame time has been called for the foreseeable future.
Milwaukee Bucks point guard Damian Lillard worse fears came true. He tore his left Achilles tendon in the first quarter of Sunday’s Game 4 blowout loss to the Indiana Pacers, the team announced Monday, ending his season and putting his status for next season in serious doubt.
The result of Monday’s imaging confirmed what Lillard, and the organization feared when he went down to the floor in agony, halfway through the first quarter, attempting to track down an offensive rebound. Lillard successfully recovered the loose ball and got the Bucks an extra possession, but the result of tracking that rebound down was devastating to say the least.
Lillard, 34, missed the final 14 games of the regular season with what was eventually diagnosed as a deep vein thrombosis (blood clot) in his right leg. While the initial expectation was missing the entire playoff run, Lillard returned to action in Game 2 against the Pacers after not playing full-contact basketball for over a month, since March 18.
The nine-time All-Star now faces a grueling and agonizing rehab process to return to the court after 13 NBA seasons. An Achilles tear typically comes with an 8–12-month recovery timeline, meaning Lillard is likely to miss the early part of next season and could be sidelined for most of it.
Meanwhile, his team will go on without him and will try to stave off elimination without Lillard in Game 5 on Tuesday on the road in Indianapolis, trailing 3-1 in their first-round playoff series.
“You see your teammate being down and your first thought is, ‘Come on, get up, get up, get up,’ ” Bucks forward Giannis Antetokounmpo said. “Took some time being down, couldn’t get up and then you’re like, ‘OK, let’s see.’ The head trainer goes out there. The physio goes out there. Kind of check what it is, but the moment you see a player not getting up and he’s limping, and he cannot walk on his own, you kind of know that it’s serious.
“Especially for a guy like Dame, that is a competitor. He wants to play in big games. He wants to help the team win. When you see a guy like that not able to walk on his own, you know this might be serious and then you kind of hope that it’s the best-case scenario. And for now, we just hope it’s the best-case scenario for him, for his health. That’s pretty much it. It’s tough.”
The diagnosis is a worse-case scenario for a team and organization that had their backs against the wall heading into the postseason.
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For the first time in nearly a decade, since 2017, the Bucks did not put together a strong enough regular-season record to host a first-round playoff matchup. But an eight-game winning streak without Lillard’s services helped them close the regular season with a 48-34 record.
Yet, the Bucks’ playoff performance will always play an important role in the perception of the team, and Milwaukee now faces the possibility of getting eliminated in the first round for the third consecutive postseason, although injuries have ravaged the team and played a significant role in every loss.
As the Bucks head out on the road for what could be their final game of the year, where they have lost eight consecutive playoff games, they will attempt to take the first step toward doing the highly improbable: coming back from a 3-1 series deficit. Only a mere 13 teams in NBA history have accomplished that goal.
Coming into this postseason, according to the NBA, teams that lead a best-of-seven series 3-1 go on to win the series 95.5 percent of the time (275-13).
While not having Lillard on Tuesday will lessen the Bucks chances, Lillard’s injury will affect so much more than just this one particular postseason.
Lillard turns 35 in July. His numbers took a dip, averaging just under 24.9 points per game this season, dishing out seven assists on 44 percent shooting from the field and 37 percent from 3-point range, both percentages career worse. Prior to this season, Lillard’s last significant injury came during the 2021-22 season when the former Weber State guard missed 47 games due to abdominal strain when he was with the Portland Trailblazers.
An Achilles tear is one of the most serious injuries for an athlete. It can take up to a year to fully recover, and even if Lillard gets back on the floor, it is often difficult for players to return to the same performance level they had prior to the tear. This injury will also likely prevent any team from asking about acquiring Lillard in a trade.
Like Antetokounmpo, Lillard is owed $54.1 million next season. But while Antetokounmpo’s contract runs through the 2026-27 campaign with a player option for the 2027-28 season, Lillard’s runs through the 2025-26 season with a player option for the 2026-27 season.
At this year’s February trade deadline, the Bucks moved Khris Middleton to the Washington Wizards, who had been a staple in Milwaukee for years, to give their superstar tandem the freedom they needed to carry the team’s offensive workload and also get under the punitive second apron.
With this devastating diagnosis, everything will fall on Antetokounmpo’s broad shoulders, and that is before considering how much the roster could change this offseason.
As highlighted when the Bucks agreed to a contract extension with general manager Jon Horst, the Bucks have many difficult roster decisions to make. Antetokounmpo, Lillard, Kyle Kuzma and Tyler Smith are the only four players with guaranteed contracts for next season. They have AJ Green, Andre Jackson Jr. and Chris Livingston on non-guaranteed deals as well, but after that, the roster is full of question marks and veterans.
Pat Connaughton, Kevin Porter Jr. and Bobby Portis hold player options for next season with the chance to hit free agency. And while they hold various rights to the rest of the players on the roster, including center Brook Lopez, that would allow the team the flexibility to sign some of those players to larger contracts than the minimum.
All of those players could decide to leave and go elsewhere as unrestricted free agents this offseason. Some players might do so if they feel like suiting up and playing for the Bucks does not give them the best chance to compete for a championship.
But the problems heading into the offseason do not end with potentially losing players in free agency; they also have control of very few draft picks.
While league rules require them to maintain rights to first-round picks in the 2026, 2028 and 2030 NBA Drafts, the picks they currently have rights to in those seasons are already tied up in pick swaps with other teams. And the Bucks traded away their 2025, 2027 and 2029 first-round selections in the deals to acquire Jrue Holiday in November 2020 and then Lillard.
