Right now, the Blazers and Carmelo Anthony need each other

The Portland Trail Blazers have ramped up discussions on a Damian Lillard trade over the past few weeks. Lillard requested a trade from the Blazers to the Miami Heat on July 1st and talks have been slow to develop.

“My sense is that the Blazers have done a lot more talking with teams in the last, say 10 to 14 days, than they did probably in at least a month plus prior,” said Adrian Wojnarowski on ESPN. “A big part of that is the league is back to work now after Labor Day, and training camp is starting to approach. And that’s the next real deadline in this process.

“But I think Portland, what they’ve been trying to do, is see how they could put together multi-team deals that would get them the assets that they would want. Draft picks, young players. There might be a team that their best asset is a veteran player that doesn’t interest the Blazers, but there’s a third team who might want to take on that veteran and then send whether it’s a young player or picks in part to Portland.

“So I think they’ve been in communication with a lot of teams trying to find a structure of a deal that can get them a Damian Lillard trade. We’ll see now how much traction they can get between now and the start of camp.”

The Blazers are prepared to bring Lillard into camp if he’s not traded before then.