At long last, it might be time for Damian Lillard to run from the grind. After years of unyielding devotion to the Portland Trail Blazers, the franchise legend is faced with a career-defining choice: he can either lose in Portland or win somewhere else. With the Trail Blazers seemingly keen on rebuilding, the 32 year-old Lillard no longer fits into the franchise's plans. Arguably still one of the dozen best players in the league, Lillard is coming off the most explosive seasons of his career, averaging 32.2 points and 7.8 assists last year for the Blazers. In this sense, he's too good and too old to support a tank. As such, the Lillard trade rumors have already begun to germinate with the offseason still several months away. An early potential suitor? The freshly swept Brooklyn Nets.

“Dame would be the leader they (Nets) need,” an NBA executive told HoopsHype. “I’m just not sure they have the pieces to get him, but they should try. The picks they have coming in aren’t great. It would probably take Ben Simmons’ contract to make the numbers work, but you’d have to attach picks to him on top of the picks you need for Lillard.”

As the nexus of some of the NBA's biggest moves over the last few years, the Nets are a natural partner in a Lillard trade. After emptying their cache of assets to build a superteam and then replenishing it to dismantle it, the Nets have an incentive to be good but also the capacity to match Portland's asking price; Brooklyn can't tank because doing so would only benefit their creditors in Houston. Although adding Lillard wouldn't necessarily make them a contender, it would make them respectable—at the very least, it would save them the indignity of getting swept by an Embiid-less Sixers in a Barclays Center overrun with Philadelphians.

Still, it's unclear if the Nets would necessarily want to gut themselves for an aging star so quickly, considering that they just finished ridding themselves of three aging superstars.

“I can see the Nets going for Dame, but he’s older, and that contract is so high,” another NBA executive told HoopsHype about Damian Lillard. “He could be worth a couple of firsts and a good young player.”