Damian Lillard Finally Addresses Trade Request, Doesn't Say Much

In a new interview with ESPN, Lillard confirmed that he requested a trade but didn't go into more detail.

For the first 55 days after Damian Lillard requested a trade from the Trail Blazers on July 1, he steered clear of speaking about the situation publicly in any way.

On Thursday, in a new interview with ESPN's Marc Spears, Lillard addressed the trade request for the first time, but steered clear of saying much of substance about it.

Here are the two big revelations from the interview, which mostly covered Lillard's recent Formula Zero camp in Arizona and his just-released fifth album: he did, in fact, request a trade, and his desire to win a championship is "literally the thing at the top of my list."

Beyond that, there was no calling Blazers general manager Joe Cronin a liar, no threat to air dirty laundry if he's not traded to Miami, nothing close to James Harden's very public efforts to nuke every bridge on his way out of Philadelphia.

"I won't speak on the Blazers," Lillard said in the interview. "It's a lot of love and respect, but I won't speak on the Blazers."

That's all you got, and that's likely all you're going to get until the Blazers kick off training camp with media day on Oct. 2. That's assuming he's still on the team at that point, and nothing right now would indicate that a deal is any closer than it's been all summer.

Despite the saber-rattling from Lillard's agent, Aaron Goodwin, earlier in the summer, his essentially no-commenting the entire thing this week was always the most likely path he'd take when he did finally speak about it.

Some of that is undoubtedly because of recent actions the league has taken to discourage players from trying to force trades—the warning memo they sent to teams last month about Goodwin coming on so strongly about Lillard's Miami-only stance, Harden's $100,000 fine this week for his recent comments about Daryl Morey in China. Anything more than what little he gave in the interview with Spears would have probably resulted in a fine.

But beyond that, it's always been hard to picture Lillard making it as ugly as he'd need to in order to truly force the issue. The NBPA has said they're going to fight Harden's fine, but Harden himself clearly doesn't care at all if he torches his reputation, as long as it gets him where he wants to go. Lillard still does care about that, and efforts earlier this summer by his representatives to go on the offensive fell flat because they ran so opposite to the image he’s built in 11 years and still wants to protect.

Lillard still only wants to play for the Heat, and Cronin still doesn't have much interest in anything they have to offer in return. Until one of those two things changes, the situation is going to stay as it is now.