"I Would Prefer Not To Speak On The Trail Blazers" - Damian Lillard Finally Opened Up About His Trade Demand To Miami

Kevork Djansezian. Getty Images.

The last few weeks in the NBA have mostly revolved around James Harden and his new found hatred of Daryl Morey. What we've learned is that there are two very different ways of going about a trade request. You can go the Harden route and decide to burn everything to the ground in an effort to get what you want, something Harden has some experience doing. 

Or, you could go the Dame route.

Make no mistake, both situations are pretty lame considering both players made the conscious decision to either pick up their player option or sign their max extension, so to then turn around and try and force yourself to one specific team is always going to be lame no matter who does it. But in today's NBA that's sort fo how these things work. You guarantee yourself the money first, and demand a trade later.

So while Harden was doing his best to capture all the headlines and all the drama, it's not crazy to have forgotten what was going on in Portland. I mean there are only so many times we can hear that the Blazers are still not interested in a Heat trade package. What we hadn't really heard yet is from Dame himself.

Until now.

Oh, so nothing? Cool cool cool.

Now this tells us a few things right off the bat. First, Dame isn't going to go to the Harden route and make things a complete dumpster fire. You're not going to get a "Joe Cronin is a liar" type of quote from him. That's a guy who has had some media training or at least talked about this stuff with his agent. 

Secondly, he's not looking to write a $100K check to the league. I don't think any of us needed to hear Dame "confirm" the trade demand to know it was real, and the part that got Harden in trouble was how he said he would never "play" for an organization that employed Morey, which the league says suggested he wouldn't fulfill his contract. You'll remember the NBA sent out a memo saying there were going to be penalties for that shit after Dame's agent basically did the same thing to try and force the trade to MIA.

So after all that, no chance Dame was going to do anything close to something the league could interpret as a violation.

I will say this though, in all the years of hearing Dame talk about the Blazers and not running from the grind and all that, we've never heard his tone like in that clip. To me that tells you everything you need to know. He's pissed. After seeing star after star do the exact same thing Dame is doing and get what they want only for the Blazers to not give Dame what he wants, you can see he's had enough. I'd remind him that's what happens when you sign a max extension, but oh well. 

As you can imagine, Heat fans are begging Dame to get messy and force this thing to go through, but this is probably as close to that as we're going to get. I would tell them not to worry, mostly because everyone with a brain knows Dame is ultimately going to end up in South Beach. It's not even September yet. Training camps don't open until October 3rd. I know the Blazers are posturing that they have no interest in moving Dame to MIA, but I still don't buy that for a second. 

You're not really hearing about any other potential team getting involved, so it's only a matter of time unless POR plans on being basically the first team ever to hold their franchise player hostage.