As trade rumours swirled around NBA star Damian Lillard, a familiar face on the Toronto Raptors decided to have a little fun with the situation.
Lillard requested to be traded by the Portland Trail Blazers on July 1. With speculation rampant in September that Lillard was on the move, The Athletic said he wouldn’t report to “a team like Toronto.”
That’s where O.G. Anunoby comes in. The Raptors small forward trained with Lillard in the summer.
“I was on the phone and I got a random text from O.G., ‘Welcome to Toronto,'” Lillard said while a guest on NBA TV.
“He’s always messing around, joking and stuff like that.”
After he got the text, Lillard thought, “Man, let me call this dude and see.”
The two finally connected.
“He called me back and he was laughing and I was, OK. It just caught me off-guard,” Lillard said. “I know it didn’t happen like that. … He always plays like that.”
After spending his entire 11-year NBA career with the Blazers, Lillard, 33, was traded to the Milwaukee Bucks in a blockbuster deal on Sept. 27.