---

Lillard will not travel with the team on its upcoming six-game road trip, and he
 is expected to meet with a specialist this week to determine the next steps in
managing the injury. Serious consideration has been given to Lillard taking sign
ificant time off to heal, effectively ending the Blazers' hopes at a playoff run
.

Lillard受到腹部肌腱傷勢困擾，此前已連續缺陣三場。據此前報導，拓荒者主教練Billups
透露Lillard不會隨隊出征六連客，將在本周與專家會面商談治療方案。

"I think that's probably going to be the route that we go if he doesn't get some
 kind of relief there," Blazers coach Chauncey Billups said last week when asked
 directly about the possibility of shutting Lillard down for an extended period
of time.

上週當記者詢問Billups，Lillard有沒有可能缺陣比較長一段時間時間？Billups：如果他
還不能緩解自己的疼痛問題，我認為球隊可能不得不走上那條路。

It's not only the likely path forward, it's also the logical one for both an ail
ing Lillard and a Blazers team that's looked utterly listless during the first h
alf of a season defined by organizational turmoil.

這不僅僅是拓荒者可能走上的一條路，考慮到帶傷作戰的Lillard狀態不佳，球隊上下更是
失去了活力，讓Lillard一直休戰下去或許是球隊眼前最務實的一條路。

Call it a gap year for Lillard, call it a one-year mini-rebuild for Blazers inte
rim general manager Joe Cronin. It's what the Golden State Warriors did two year
s ago, letting Stephen Curry take some time off after breaking his hand early in
 the 2019-20 season, playing for a lottery pick and letting their young players
develop without the pressure of having to win games. The next season, Curry came
 back in MVP form, and a year later, Golden State looks like the best team in th
e league again.



Lillard's long-term health is the single most important factor in the Blazers' f
uture plans. He's eligible for a two-year, $107 million extension this summer, a
nd all indications are that he would sign it if Cronin (or whoever is running ba
sketball operations by July) offered it to him. He's said repeatedly since the s
tart of the season that he isn't looking to be traded, and that doesn't appear t
o be a route the team is considering, either. As hard as other front offices and
 some media outlets have been working to will him into a trade request, a Lillar
d-Blazers divorce isn't in the cards right now from either side.



Cronin will have other decisions to make before the Feb. 10 trade deadline, up t
o and including whether to trade Lillard's nine-year backcourt partner, CJ McCol
lum. Starting center Jusuf Nurkic and veteran forward Robert Covington are free
agents at the end of the season, making them prime candidates to be moved in the
 next month. Portland owes its 2022 first-round pick to Chicago if it's outside
the lottery; if the decision is made to shut down Lillard, they'll not only keep
 that pick, it also will have a chance to be very high. Maybe even high enough t
o draft a new co-star for Lillard.



Letting Lillard take time off to get right, trading their other veterans to get
younger, letting Anfernee Simons and Nassir Little develop, losing enough games
to get a high draft pick and coming back in the fall with a clean slate and a he
althy franchise point guard ready to take a serious swing at a late-career run i
s the best outcome for both Lillard and the Blazers.

讓Lillard徹底養好傷，換走一些老將，繼續培養Anfernee Simons和Little，輸掉足夠多的
比賽爭取高順位選秀權，然後在明年東山再起。 這對Lillard和球隊來說都是最好的結果。

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