Milwaukee Bucks point guard Damian Lillard returned to the court for the first time since he was diagnosed with blood clots in his right calf back in March. Unfortunately, he didn’t play all that well after being held to just 14 points in Milwaukee’s 123-115 loss to the Indiana Pacers.
“It felt pretty good, given the fact that I haven’t played in so long,” Lillard said after the game. “Jumping back into a playoff game, I’d say I felt pretty good.”
He then admitted that he felt tired after playing 37 minutes of the 48-minute game.
DAME RANGE. https://t.co/aEF0yzqVeA pic.twitter.com/mcCp1fnZk1
— Milwaukee Bucks (@Bucks) April 23, 2025
“I got a little bit winded, but I think everybody was a little winded,” Lillard explained. “It’s all mental. It’s a mental battle… For me, I wasn’t really thinking about ‘Oh, I’m tired,’ or any of those things. It was just like, I’m out here and I’m gonna do what I got to do.”
This marked the first playoff game where Dame and Giannis Antetokounmpo were both able to start. Last year, Antetokounmpo missed the entirety of the 2024 playoffs.
“Dame’s gotta get his legs under him. It was his first game, and he played 37 minutes for his first game back,” Antetokounmpo said. “He’s gonna get his rhythm. He’s going to be more aggressive. Go downhill more. We’ve just got to be on the same page… Hopefully, we can create a better situation for our team and for ourselves, too, to be able to score the ball.”
Even though it was Lillard’s first start since March 18th, head coach Glenn Rivers wanted to use this opportunity to help Dame get into better shape.
“Down the stretch, I just kept him in. I used it as conditioning,” Rivers said. “He was exhausted, and I saw that, and I thought, ‘Just let him blow it because we’ve got two days to recover.’ That’s basically why I kept him in.”
Damian Lillard and Tyrese Haliburton 👀 pic.twitter.com/2G7ucyfH8z
— Dime (@DimeUPROXX) April 23, 2025
“The biggest question for us is the recovery,” he continued. “The trick is trying not to get him into that point of exhaustion because then it’s hard to come back. So that’s the trick we were doing tonight.”
The Bucks are looking to avoid going down 0-3 Friday night when they play the Pacers at home.
“We’ve gotta start games better,” Lillard said. “Our attention to detail has to be better… Offensively, we’ve gotta come out and have better pace and execute better… If we can play how we played when we’ve gotten back into these games from the beginning, which is hard, I think it would look different.”
