With Teams Such As The Miami Heat Interested, Portland GM Joe Cronin Wants Damian Lillard To Retire With Trail Blazers

Damian Lillard is one of the most celebrated players in Portland Trail Blazers history.

So, naturally, the Blazers are doing everything possible to keep him in Portland. After the draft, general manager Joe Cronin addressed the months of trade speculation.

"There’s nothing we want more than, number one, for Damian to retire a Trail Blazer and two to put a winner around him, a high-end winner," Cronin said. "For us, it’s an incredible problem to have. We have got the best player in Trail Blazers’ history, that wants to be here and wants to have a winner put around him. And that’s our challenge...find ways to make this team as competitive as possible as quickly as possible."

The Miami Heat and a few other contending teams have shown interest in Lillard. Speculation only heated when the Blazers chose to keep the No. 3 pick in Thursday's NBA draft instead of trading it to bring veteran pieces around Lillard. He has said he is uninterested in playing on a rebuilding team but the Blazers drafted highly-rated prospect Scoot Henderson.

"There’s still a lot of movement to be had," Cronin said. "We’ve got to do a good job in free agency and in the trade market especially in this activity window in the next two, three weeks. We’ve planted a lot of seeds on some deals. A lot of these deals we talked about outside of three. They weren’t necessarily draft-related. Sometimes these deals will carry through to tomorrow. Could be next week, could be outside the moratorium."

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