O\u2019Connor said<\/a> while appearing as a guest on CLNS Media\u2019s Garden Report program.<\/p>\n\u201cYou have (Jayson) Tatum. You have (Jaylen) Brown, you have Payton Pritchard \u2026 you can rest, you can load manage (while recovering) from the Achilles injury. There\u2019s probably not a better situation from that standpoint.\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s when O\u2019Connor also pointed to potential downsides to Lillard joining the Celtics.<\/p>\n
Story continues below advertisement<\/p>\n
\u201cBut if you\u2019re Damian Lillard, do you want to go to a team where you might be the backup point guard?\u201d O\u2019Connor said.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s Derrick White and these guys \u2026 (why not) go to a team where you\u2019re gonna be the starter and you\u2019re gonna get opportunities to go back and be Damian Lillard again? And so I think for him, a team like the Miami Heat offers that to him more so than Boston does.\u201d<\/p>\n
O\u2019Connor\u2019s point suggests that a juicy arms race might emerge between two Eastern Conference rivals for Lillard\u2019s services. Then again, if Boston\u2019s loaded depth chart at guard is the main deterrent for Lillard, there\u2019s nothing the Celtics could do to fix that, short of moving on from White or Pritchard, which would be unwise.<\/p>\n
Lillard\u2019s big decision could ultimately come down to whether he wants more touches or a greater chance of contending.<\/p>\n
Story continues below advertisement<\/p>\n
Miami\u2019s no slouch, but it\u2019s tough to see them being in a better position to contend in 2026-2027 than the Celtics\u2019 core.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It might be in Damian Lillard\u2019s best interest to choose the Miami Heat over the Boston Celtics. With…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":63217,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[23229,1260,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-63216","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-damian-lillard","9":"tag-nba","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-united-states","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114848067930326357","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63216","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63216"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63216\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63217"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}