Bucks' Damian Lillard feeling grateful as he gets closer to joining his teammates in playoffs

MILWAUKEE — Milwaukee Bucks guard Damian Lillard isn't sure exactly when he will be playing again. He's just grateful that moment will come sooner than anyone could have reasonably expected.

Lillard was cleared for full-scale basketball activities and taken off blood-thinning medication this week after missing the last month with deep vein thrombosis in his right calf. The news comes as the Bucks prepare to open the playoffs Saturday at Indiana.

Deep vein thrombosis is an abnormal clot within a vessel where the congealing of blood blocks the flow through on the way back to the heart.

''Obviously there's people with way worse issues than I've dealt with, so I don't want to be dramatic about it, but you just never know when something could come up and change your life,'' Lillard said Friday. ''It's been guys like Chris Bosh who dealt with this and then it's another issue and it could be a career-ending thing, so I think you just can't take days and opportunities and things in your life for granted.''

Lillard couldn't do much from a basketball standpoint beyond shooting free throws while he was on the blood-thinning medication, but the seven-time All-NBA guard said specialists permitted him to do some exercises, such as lifting weights, that could hasten his return to the court now that he's been cleared.

The Bucks have ruled him out for Saturday's game.

''I knew that if there was a chance that I could come back and play, I didn't just want to be sitting around doing nothing,'' said Lillard, who practiced Thursday without restrictions.

Returning to the court wasn't his primary concern when he got the diagnosis. He was more worried about how this might impact him on a personal level.

Lillard said he was familiar with the potential impact of blood clots because of a cousin who dealt with a blood clot in his calf without being aware of it during the pandemic.

''During COVID, they couldn't get him in because everything was on Zoom, and he ended up having a pulmonary embolism and dying, so obviously that's the first thing that comes to mind,'' Lillard said.

Lillard said he was at dinner last month when he noticed his leg was swollen and felt particularly tight, different from a typical calf strain. Once he learned he had DVT, he started envisioning all the scary possibilities.

''The millions of thoughts that went through my head like, ‘Man, what if this? What if that?'" Lillard said. ''I was panicking. My back randomly started hurting, my chest started hurting, and I'm like, ‘Man, is it moving?' I'm thinking all kinds of stuff.''

Lillard said he initially didn't really ask his doctors when he might play again and instead focused on how long it takes for a clot to go away and stop becoming an issue.

''The term they kept using was you're not a 65-year-old person coming in that usually would have a blood clot,'' Lillard said. ''It's like, you're a 34-year-old athlete, you're in good shape, your body is strong. That was kind of like the language they used.

''But I would say what made it a different thing is I was able to go in weekly. That's not the usual protocol. If it's something where you're on a blood-thinning medication, I feel like it's more of a drawn-out process where they'll just go that route, as opposed to me going in every week, doing labs, getting the ultrasound. I was kind of going in each week just monitoring it inch-by-inch pretty much, just to see if it was like even a little progress or just to make sure that it was going how I wanted it to go.''

Lillard's potential return is coming remarkably fast.

Victor Wembanyama of the San Antonio Spurs was diagnosed with DVT in his shoulder after he returned from the All-Star Game and was quickly ruled out for the season. Bosh's career was cut short after he was diagnosed with blood clots while playing with Miami.

Lillard says doctors have told him his case was unusual.

''They were just like, ‘We don't see this,' '' Lillard said. ''For me, I was just like, it was a different experience for me because I went in there a bunch of times and it was the same size. So I'm like, it didn't seem that special, and then it just reached a point where it just got a lot smaller out of nowhere.''

Now he's on the verge of playing again. Bucks coach Doc Rivers believes Lillard's attitude has something to do with his rapid return.

''He just kept saying, ‘I'm going to get through this,'" Rivers said. ''The energy of positive thinking, there may be something there. There is in this case, I can tell you that.''

Exactly when Lillard will take the floor remains uncertain. Lillard doesn't want to set a particular target date because he's not quite sure exactly when he'll be ready after not having any real basketball activity at all for a month. The last game he played was on March 18.

''The moment that I feel I can go, I'm going to go,'' Lillard said.

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