INDIANAPOLIS – The Milwaukee Bucks entered Game 3 against the Indiana Pacers at Gainbridge Fieldhouse already short handed with Giannis Antetokounmpo out with a left soleus (calf) muscle strain and Khris Middleton hobbled by a sprained right ankle – and then all-star point guard Damian Lillard went down in a heap, grabbing his left knee in obvious pain with 2 minutes, 13 seconds to go in the first quarter of the Bucks’ 121-118 overtime loss.
Lillard returned to finish the game, playing 45 minutes.
“I laid the ball in and when I landed, when (Pascal Siakam) tried to block me he landed on my foot and the way he landed on my foot it just twisted my knee,” Lillard said of the play. “It just happened so fast as I was landing. My foot was gonna do one thing and when all his weight came down on my foot it kind of twisted me up. It was painful, initially, so I just stayed down.”
He remained on the baseline as play continued on the other end of the court before Pat Connaughton committed a foul to stop play with Indiana up 29-16. Lillard said the medical staff wanted him to go right to the locker room but he insisted on staying on the bench for a few moments to see if loosened up, but he eventually acquiesced to some testing in the locker room.
Antetokounmpo then went back to the locker room as well to check on the point guard.
After spending the end of the first quarter and the break between then and the start of the second in the locker room, the point guard walked out to the court and told head coach Doc Rivers he could check back in, which he did at the 11:38 mark.
Lillard played eight minutes from there, scoring four points on 2-of-5 shooting before the injury. He came back and finished the first half with nine points on 2-of-10 shooting. He was 5 for 5 from the free throw line.
“I felt like it was some discomfort, some soreness, but I didn’t think it was something I couldn’t play with,” he said. “That was it.”
He said he knew he’d be uncomfortable but didn’t feel like he was putting himself at risk for a more severe injury.
Unfortunately for Lillard, he suffered a different injury with 9.3 seconds left regulation when he aggravated his right Achilles tendon. At some point in Indiana’s inbound play, which lasted until the 6.9-second mark, he was in discomfort.
That injury effectively rendered Lillard as an offensive decoy in the fourth quarter, as he played all but five seconds of the overtime but didn’t attempt a shot. Though he told Doc Rivers he didn’t have any explosiveness for that overtime period, he said he hopes he can get some of it back by Sunday’s Game 4.
“I mean, that’s the plan,” Lillard said. “I think tonight it as just so fresh, just reaggravated after having a whole week to kind of get it together. But I just wanted to be on the floor in case something, an opportunity came up or however I could help. But obviously tonight we’ll have to get back and just get ahead of it ‘cause that’s not something that you want o play it. It’s one of those spots on your body where literally you can’t do nothing about it. If you can’t move, you can’t move. We got a couple days, tonight, to start, to just try to get ahead of it.”
Lillard had aggravated the tendon in the team’s regular season finale on April 14 in Orlando and contributed to him missing practices last week.
