Damian Lillard Trade Timeline: All-Star Guard Was Not Welcomed Back in Portland After Trade Request, per Report

All-NBA guard Damian Lillard was traded from the Portland Trail Blazers to the Milwaukee Bucks in a three-team deal Wednesday, and Bleacher Report's Chris Haynes released a timeline of events leading up to the trade on Thursday.

Lillard requested to be traded from Portland more than a week after the NBA Draft, in which the Blazers used the third overall pick on G-League Ignite guard Scoot Henderson.

The 33-year-old guard told Portland general manager Joe Cronin he would like to be traded to the Miami Heat, who have appeared in two NBA Finals since 2020. During a Sept. 5 meeting, Lillard told Cronin that he wished to return to the Pacific Northwest if a trade to Miami couldn't be facilitated.

According to Haynes, Cronin would not welcome Lillard back, which came as a shock to the 2013 Rookie of the Year.

As players began to trickle in for workouts, Lillard returned to the Portland facilities on Sept. 11, believing he wouldn't be traded. In eight days of working out, Lillard says Cronin never addressed him.

"I didn't go there to cause any problems," Lillard told Haynes. "That's not my character. If they felt that way, it wasn't my intent. I was just trying to get acclimated and everyone was happy to see me. Every single person except Joe. He never spoke to me. And when I noticed that, I made up in my mind that I'm not going out my way to speak to him."

During the Sept. 5 meeting, Cronin made Lillard aware that he would milk every asset possible from the Heat if he was forced into making that trade. After sitting on that thought and seeing how workouts were going, Lillard and his agent, Aaron Goodwin, met on Sept. 17 to consider alternative trade destinations. the two decided that Milwaukee and the Brooklyn Nets would be acceptable destinations.

"I wanted everyone to understand that even though we didn't have a no-trade clause, a provision that's not afforded to Dame under the CBA, I was going to do everything in my power to control the market and help get my client to a place he wanted to be," Goodwin told Haynes.

According to Haynes, the Bucks had checked in on Lillard's availability for years as Lillard and 2021 NBA Finals MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo have both expressed a deep basketball respect for each other.

The new-look Bucks open training camp on October 3.