Here’s Milwaukee Bucks star Damian Lillard on his reaction to the team dealing Khris Middleton yesterday (traded along with AJ Johnson and a pick swap to the Washington Wizards for Kyle Kuzma, Patrick Baldwin Jr. and second round draft compensation).
(via Milwaukee Bucks):
Eric Nehm: “I guess kinda going into this season, the hope was a Big 3 with you, Giannis [Antetokounmpo], and Khris. Now Khris being gone, is there some level I guess of disappointment just the fact that everyone was kinda injured throughout all that, you never really got to go through it?”
Lillard: “Yeah, I would say it’s disappointing. Obviously when I came to Milwaukee, I came here and I’m like, ‘Man, I get to play with Giannis obviously, Khris Middleton.’ Me and K-Midd was camp teammates in 2010. I remember coming back from camp to school and they like, ‘Who was nice?’ And I’m like, ‘It’s this dude Khris Middleton at Texas A&M, he nice.’ I remember being on his team, and then over the course of our careers playing against him, seeing what he’s been able to do, and coming here like, ‘Man, Imma have this type of help. Imma be playing with these types of players.’ And for us to never be healthy enough and just get a real run in. Even last year in the playoffs: He had a great playoff series, I had a great playoff series, and we just weren’t healthy. Giannis didn’t play at all. I missed two games in that series. And then we come back this season, and he missed a lot of time, then in and out of the lineup. And then I missed some time and Giannis missed time.
“And now, here we are at the deadline and he gets moved. You look back and it’s like, ‘Man, we never really got that real shot and that real stretch to really go do what we had plans to do.’ So it’s definitely disappointing and it’s unfortunate, but it’s part of the game, it’s part of this league. Sometimes that’s how it goes and it doesn’t always go as planned. We’re not the first team or people that it’s happened to, and we not the last. You’ve just gotta take it for what it is. It’s unfortunate, it’s disappointing, because you come into it thinking it could be such a great thing. And then to never see that, was disappointing.”
