Damian Lillard Is The Biggest Free-Agent Wild Card In Recent NBA History

The Milwaukee Bucks just threw a chaos grenade into the NBA free-agent pool.

To clear out enough salary-cap space to sign former Indiana Pacers center Myles Turner to a four-year, $107 million contract, the Bucks decided to waive and stretch nine-time All-Star point guard Damian Lillard on Tuesday, according to ESPN’s Shams Charania. Lillard tore his Achilles tendon in the Bucks’ first-round playoff loss to the Pacers and figured to miss most if not all of next season to recover from that injury.

With star forward Giannis Antetokounmpo reportedly open to exploring a future outside of Milwaukee, the Bucks didn’t have the luxury of waiting for the 34-year-old Lillard to recover. Instead, they’re stretching the remaining $112.6 million of his contract, which means they’ll have a dead cap hit of roughly $22.5 million for each of the next five seasons.

Lillard will still get paid the full amount that he was owed, and he’ll now become an unrestricted free agent once he inevitably clears waivers in a few days. According to Sam Amick of The Athletic, Lillard is “elated with this decision, as it puts him in the kind of basketball-first position that few All-Star-level players, if any, have experienced in league history.”

Regardless of whether Lillard winds up signing with a team sometime this year or waits until next summer once he’s fully recovered from his injury, he’s now the biggest free-agent wild card in recent NBA history.

The Freedom Of Choice

This will be Lillard’s first foray into free agency, and it will be a unique experience for him.

For most players, free agency is an opportunity to secure their next big payday. If they whiff, they often have to settle for short-term deals below what they were hoping to land and try again the following year.

Lillard, who turns 35 in mid-July, isn’t likely to secure a contract anywhere close to commensurate with his career accomplishments. After all, NBA players have a checkered history with Achilles injuries, and even the success stories—Kevin Durant and Klay Thompson are among the most notable ones—got injured earlier in their careers than Lillard just did.

The good news for Lillard is that he doesn’t have to worry about the financial component, at least until 2027-28.

“There is a salary offset for any team that acquires him during that two-year period,” Amick explained. “And while the Bucks would surely prefer Lillard sign for a significant salary as a way to alleviate some of their financial burden, the reality is he could sign for a minimum-salary deal and still be paid the same amount.”

That isn’t quite accurate, as there’s a formula to determine how much the Bucks are allowed to set off from his dead cap hits in 2025-26 and 2026-27. Whatever he signs for next, the Bucks can set off one-half of the difference between that salary and the veteran-minimum salary for a player with one year of NBA experience this season ($2,048,494).

In other words, if Lillard were to sign a one-year, $10 million deal, the Bucks would set off nearly $4 million, and he would earn an additional $6 million overall. But if he isn’t fixated on maximizing his earning potential—after all, he’s earning $54.1 million this year and $58.5 million next year at a bare minimum—he has the freedom to handpick his next team.

“He’s ecstatic,” ESPN’s Marc J. Spears said on NBA Today. His agent, Aaron Goodwin, told me this is an incredible opportunity for him. He gets to be a free agent two years early, choose where he wants to go. Money really doesn’t matter right now because he’s still getting paid by the Bucks.”

Logical Landing Spots

Spears said a “double-digit number of teams” are already interested in signing Lillard.

“If he signs with a team, it may well be a two-year deal, a very economical deal for that team, but also allows him to do a two-year kind of trial, see how it is, see if it’s a place he could be long-term,” he added.

If Lillard is willing to sign for a veteran-minimum contract, which is $3.6 million for someone like him with 10 or more years of NBA experience, he’d be allowed to join virtually any team in the league. The only exception would be teams that are hard-capped at either apron and don’t have enough wiggle room under that apron to add another minimum contract.

However, if Lillard is planning to sign with a team this year and wants to land more than the minimum, that throws a wrench into the larger free-agent landscape. Some teams might decide to save their mid-level and/or bi-annual exceptions to use on him in-season if he recovers more quickly than expected and is healthy for the stretch run. That could prove costly to other free agents who were hoping to land one of those deals this offseason.

The harsh reality is that Lillard likely won’t be ready to meaningfully contribute to an NBA team until the 2026-27 campaign. Both Durant and Thompson missed an entire season after tearing their Achilles in recent years, and the last thing Lillard should do given his age is rush back from that injury.

Even once he does fully recover, it’s unclear how effective he’ll be. The odds are against him regaining his All-Star form, and he might be even more of a liability on defense than he already was. However, both Durant and Thompson have maintained their efficiency as long-range shooters, which has been one of Lillard’s specialties throughout his 13-year career.

Perhaps Lillard will no longer be a 25-point-per-game scorer anymore, but on a minimum or near-minimum contract, he doesn’t need to be. Even if he settles into a late-career role as a three-point shooting specialist a la Seth Curry or Luke Kennard, he’d still have surplus value on a contract that small.

Free agency got off to a relatively sleepy start this year, but the Bucks just provided a jolt of caffeine to the proceedings Tuesday with their decision to waive Lillard. Where he ultimately decides to sign and what he looks like upon his return will be among the NBA’s biggest wild cards this season.

Unless otherwise noted, all stats via NBA.com, PBPStats, Cleaning the Glass or Basketball Reference. All salary information via Spotrac and salary-cap information via RealGM. All odds via FanDuel Sportsbook.

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