Following a four-game absence in which the Milwaukee Bucks went 2-2, All-Star guard Damian Lillard returned to the floor in a 116-111 loss to the Chicago Bulls on Saturday night.
While Lillard didn’t have the best shooting night, making just eight of the 19 shots he attempted, he still scored 29 points. He went 10 of 10 from the free-throw line and added six rebounds and 12 assists.
“I felt physically fine like moving around, but as the game went on, you just feel a little weak and I haven’t played,” Lillard said. “Still a little bit sick, feeling it in my chest and coughing a little bit, but I expected it to be like that coming into the game because I haven’t played.”
“I tried to just throw myself out there. And then as the game went on, I tried to be a little more and more assertive.”
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Lillard found his best rhythm in the fourth quarter and re-entered the game with the Bucks trailing 93-86 and 10:20 left on the clock. When Bulls coach Billy Donovan called a timeout with 7:16 remaining, Milwaukee led 99-95, as Lillard had completely taken over the game.
In the Bucks’ 13-2 run, Lillard scored 11 straight points and drew five fouls against the Bulls as Milwaukee coach Doc Rivers had his point guard continuously flying around screens, dribble handoffs and pick-and-rolls. With Bulls defenders playing aggressively on defense, Lillard kept taking advantage of defenders in compromised positions.
“I just noticed, throughout the entire game, how aggressive they were being on the ball, trying to fight through screens,” Lillard said. “I’m always looking to see what types of trends I see by teams over the course of the game. Sometimes I try to do something right away. Other times I try to wait to the end of the game and try to manipulate something.
“And that was one of the things — just knowing that they were fighting over so aggressively. So just trying to get some free throws or at least try to rack up those fouls, so we could get into the penalty.”
Even playing through the illness, Lillard was so effective at the start of the fourth quarter that the Bulls did everything in their power to get the ball out of his hands at the end of the game, regularly sending second and third defenders at Lillard to force him off the ball. And that plan worked.
Lillard took his last shot with 5:07 remaining. He continued to touch the ball late in the game and make plays for his teammates but didn’t take a shot during clutch time. Ultimately, the attention on Lillard created good looks — Khris Middleton, who scored 21 points, missed two good looks at jumpers in the final three minutes — but Lillard didn’t get a chance to take the shots that mattered most.
“That’s gotta be better,” Rivers said. “One thing I would say is I gotta be better (at) making sure Dame gets the ball in his hands down the stretch of the game.
“We drew two plays up to get him on the secondary (action) because they were loading up and he never got it. Like we have to have an understanding to get it to him and I just gotta get it to him and live with it.”
In the end, the Bucks weren’t good enough to pull out a win in Lillard’s return, but seeing him on the floor was a welcome sign for the team after his four-game absence.
Lillard missed two games following a right calf strain that he sustained in the Bucks’ 97-81 NBA Cup Final win over the Oklahoma City Thunder, but as his right calf injury cleared up, an illness forced the 13-year NBA veteran to miss two more games.
Speaking publicly for the first time since his absence following the Bucks’ shootaround in the United Center on Saturday, Lillard said this was not a situation where a star player was taking a night off and the illness was not an excuse.
“I f— wish it was that, I’ll tell you that,” Lillard said. “I was just telling (my teammates) earlier, like I’ve never been that sick before in my entire life.
“I wasn’t throwing up, nothing. I just didn’t eat for two days. I didn’t eat at all. I didn’t get up, nothing. I was down. It was bad.”
After dropping their first game after the NBA Cup in Cleveland without Lillard, the Bucks won two straight games without Lillard and Giannis Antetokounmpo. Antetokounmpo, Lillard’s running mate that forms the other half of the NBA’s top-scoring duo this season, missed two games with back spasms before missing the Bucks’ 111-105 loss to the Brooklyn Nets on Thursday with a non-Covid illness like Lillard.
Lillard hoped to play in Thursday’s game, but couldn’t make it through a workout confidently enough to get on the floor versus the Nets.
“A couple days ago, I tried to work out — the night before the Brooklyn game — because I wanted to play against Brooklyn and the whole time I was working out, it made me cough, coughing up sh—,” Lillard said. “I got through the workout, but I couldn’t breathe good. So, the last couple days, that’s all I’ve been doing. Just trying to work that stuff out and it’s still been like having me super winded, but I mean, I guess at some point, you just gotta get out there and burn it out. So, that’s what my plan is.”
Following the Bucks’ Saturday morning shootaround, Lillard said that the illness caused him to lose “a couple pounds” as he could not eat for two days. He added that part of the reason for getting on the floor against Chicago would be trying to get his conditioning back up to where it needs to be to compete on a nightly basis.
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The 34-year-old point guard said his right calf is good and he isn’t concerned about the strain that initially put him on the sidelines following the NBA Cup.
“It was a mild strain to begin with,” Lillard said. “I did it against Atlanta in Vegas. It happened against Atlanta. I just tweaked it in the championship game to where it was like I’m going to miss — depending on when our next one is and how I feel — I’m going to miss that one and the one after that.
“But we got on that. We had been on top of that right away, so even when I tried to get back on the court, it was like a little bit tight because I hadn’t been moving, but it was alright. I didn’t have no issues.”
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(Photo: Ethan Miller / Getty Images)
