INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Milwaukee Bucks coach Doc Rivers has learned to take 10-time NBA All-Star Damian Lillard at his word.
So when Rivers spoke with his injured 34-year-old star guard Tuesday, he wasn't surprised to hear Lillard's reaction to the torn left Achilles tendon that knocked him out of this year's first-round playoff series against Indiana.
“He said two things, which I love," Rivers said. "The first one, he just said ‘I can’t believe I'm here.' Then the second one is ‘I'm not going out this way.' I can guarantee you he won't, and that's what I meant about his resolve.”
Lillard suffered a non-contact injury Sunday night in Game 4 of the Bucks series against Indiana. He was behind the 3-point line, near the top of the key, midway through the first quarter when the ball bounced toward him. Lillard used his left hand to tip the ball toward teammate Gary Trent Jr., then went down and grabbed the lower part of his left leg.
He remained seated as play continued and needed help — both to get up and to leave the court. Milwaukee lost the game 129-103, putting the Bucks in a 3-1 deficit and on the brink of a third straight first-round exit. The series resumes Tuesday night in Indianapolis.
Lillard's absence is a huge blow, especially after the seven-time All-NBA selection fought so hard to return just a month after being diagnosed with deep vein thrombosis in his right calf — an ailment that typically takes months to recover from, not weeks.
Then in his third game back, Lillard got hurt again. this time with an injury that could keep him out of a significant portion of next season and potentially end his pairing with two-time MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo. The tandem has appeared in just three playoff games over their two seasons as teammates.
But Lillard is determined to come back as quickly as possible.
“It's amazing,” Rivers said. “He's already talking about his return and being better and being ready. We had a long talk about that today as well.”
Lillard didn't look like his typically explosive self in any of the three games against the Pacers. He averaged 7.0 points, 4.7 assists and 2.7 rebounds in those games compared with the 31.3 points he scored in last year's 4-2 series loss to the Pacers and the 18.3 points and 9.3 assists he averaged in this season's' four regular-season games against Indiana.
He ranked 10th in the NBA in scoring (24.9) and 10th in assists (7.1) this season.
After Sunday’s game, the Pacers players who had sparred verbally with Lillard through the first three games of the series also sent their best to Lillard.
Rivers opted to shake up his starting lineup Tuesday by inserting guards A.J. Green and Kevin Porter Jr., as well as forward Bobby Portis Jr. Trent also returns to the starting lineup.
Lillard's latest absence is yet the latest chapter in some bad postseason luck for the Bucks since winning their 2021 title.
A knee injury kept Khris Middleton out of the entire seven-game Eastern Conference semifinal loss to Boston in 2022. Antetokounmpo bruised his lower back in Game 1 and missed the next two games before returning in a 2023 first-round series loss to Miami. Antetokounmpo also missed all six games against Indiana in 2024 with a strained calf.
AP Sports Writer Steve Megargee also contributed to this report.
AP NBA: https://apnews.com/nba
Milwaukee Bucks' Damian Lillard is helped from the floor against the Indiana Pacers during the first half of Game 4 of a first-round NBA basketball playoff series Sunday, April 27, 2025, in Milwaukee. (AP Photo/Jeffrey Phelps)
Milwaukee Bucks' Damian Lillard grimaces as he falls to the floor against the Indiana Pacers during the first half of Game 4 of a first-round NBA basketball playoff series Sunday, April 27, 2025, in Milwaukee. (AP Photo/Jeffrey Phelps)
Milwaukee Bucks' Damian Lillard grimaces as he falls to the floor against the Indiana Pacers during the first half of Game 4 of a first-round NBA basketball playoff series Sunday, April 27, 2025, in Milwaukee. (AP Photo/Jeffrey Phelps)
WASHINGTON (AP) — When acting Attorney General Todd Blanche signed off on a nearly $1.8 billion fund meant to compensate President Donald Trump's allies for alleged political prosecution, he may have pleased his boss.
But the eyebrow-raising move — the latest in his push to prove his loyalty to Trump — has agitated the same Republican lawmakers if he is nominated for the permanent job.
Blanche insists he’s not auditioning for the job of attorney general. But a succession of splashy steps the Justice Department has taken under his watch since he took the position on an acting basis last month, including an indictment of former FBI Director James Comey, has left no doubt about the impression he’s hoping to make on the president who appointed him.
The fund in particular has put Blanche at the center of a Republican firestorm at a time when he aims to establish himself as the perfect person for the job for the remainder of Trump’s term. And it sharpened concerns from Democrats and other Blanche critics that he has not shed his mantle as the president’s personal attorney.
“So the nation’s top law enforcement official is asking for a slush fund to pay people who assault cops? Utterly stupid, morally wrong — Take your pick,” Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the former majority leader, said in a statement.
A former federal prosecutor in New York, Blanche came to public prominence for his lead role on Trump's defense team, including during the Republican's hush money trial in New York. That perch afforded him, he has said, a firsthand look at what he contends was the weaponization of the criminal justice system against Trump.
He was brought into the Justice Department as deputy attorney general, the No. 2 job, then was elevated last month after Trump ousted Pam Bondi.
Now he finds himself the latest Trump-appointed attorney general to simultaneously confront expectations from subordinates to uphold institutional norms and demands from the president to do his bidding.
Trump's first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, was forced out after the 2018 midterms after infuriating the president over his recusal from an investigation into ties between Russia and the 2016 presidential campaign. Another, William Barr, resigned after their relationship fizzled over Barr's refusal to back Trump's baseless claims of massive election fraud. Bondi was removed after struggling to bring successful prosecutions against Trump's political opponents.
Two weeks after becoming acting attorney general, Blanche announced the appointment of Joseph diGenova, an 81-year-old former Justice Department prosecutor from the Reagan administration, to a special position inside the department. He'll oversee a Florida-based investigation into whether former law enforcement and intelligence officials conspired over the last decade to undermine Trump.
“At some point, at the right time, that will be made public and the American people will see exactly what happened to this administration and President Trump over the past decade," Blanche told Fox News.
Prior government reviews of the FBI's Trump-Russia investigation, a centerpiece of the current conspiracy investigation, have failed to produce criminal charges against senior officials or evidence of criminal conduct by them. It's not clear what, if any, new information the continuing investigation has developed.
The Justice Department also last month obtained an indictment charging Comey, a Trump foe whose prosecution the president has long called for, with threatening Trump through a social media photo of seashells in the numerical arrangement of “86 47" — a case legal experts say will be challenging for prosecutors. Comey has said he wouldn't be surprised if the Justice Department pursues additional indictments.
In other moves, Blanche announced an indictment of the Southern Poverty Law Center, a nonprofit that has been the target of conservative outrage, with misleading donors about its activities, and has publicly defended a Justice Department crackdown on leaks to the news media, including subpoenas to reporters.
Arguably the most audacious demonstration of loyalty to Trump came this week when the Justice Department announced the creation of a $1.776 billion fund to compensate people who feel they've been unjustly investigated and prosecuted, coupled with a guarantee of immunity from tax audits for Trump and his eldest sons.
As Republican concerns grew, Blanche held a tense meeting with GOP lawmakers Thursday. Shortly afterward, Senate Republicans abruptly left Washington without voting on a roughly $70 billion bill to fund immigration enforcement agencies.
Blanche, who defended the fund at a congressional hearing this week, has said anyone who believes they've been persecuted can apply for compensation regardless of political affiliation. But the fund has been widely understood as a boon to Trump allies investigated during the Biden administration.
“It’s pretty clear that he’s not the attorney general for the United States as much as he's the attorney general for President Trump,” said Stephen Saltzburg, a George Washington University law professor and senior Justice Department official in the 1980s. He said Blanche would get an A+ if report cards were issued for fealty to Trump.
David Laufman, a former chief of staff to the deputy attorney general in President George W. Bush's administration, said that rather than protecting the Justice Department's independence, Blanche has been a “willing and ardent accomplice for carrying out any partisan or corrupt scheme the White House may devise.”
Blanche’s supporters dismiss the suggestion he is trying to curry favor with Trump to secure the permanent job.
“What he is doing is he is seeking justice based on facts and the law,” said Jay Town, who served as a U.S. attorney in Alabama during the first Trump administration. “And I don’t think that will ever change about him, whether he is the attorney general going forward or doesn’t spend another day in the administration. He is an honorable man and anybody that knows him knows that to be true.”
Blanche also says he is not angling to keep his job or feeling pressure to placate Trump.
He has told reporters he would be honored to be nominated but, "if he chooses to nominate somebody else and asks me to go do something else, I will say, ‘Thank you very much. I love you, sir.’ I don’t have any goals or aspirations beyond that.”
In recent days, he's functioned as the fund's public face and most visible defender, a role consistent with his comfort in the spotlight. He sometimes holds multiple press conferences a week and grants interviews to a variety of news outlets, a contrast to Bondi, who largely stuck to Fox News appearances.
His defenders say his experience as a federal prosecutor has made him a more sophisticated communicator for the department than Bondi, but his statements have at times invited backlash, including his refusal to rule out that violent Jan. 6 rioters could be eligible for payouts.
Though Blanche will appoint the five commissioners tasked with processing claims, his precise role in the fund’s implementation is unclear. He told CNN it was developed through negotiations with Trump’s private lawyers, not him.
For some Democrats, that's a difference without a distinction.
“Mr. Attorney General, you are acting today like the president's personal attorney," Sen. Chris Van Hollen, a Maryland Democrat, told Blanche during a combative exchange in the Senate hearing, "and that's the whole problem."
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche arrives for a closed-door meeting with Republican senators who are expected to abandon a proposal for $1 billion in security money for the White House complex and President Donald Trump's ballroom after it has failed to win enough party support, at the Capitol in Washington, Thursday, May 21, 2026. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche arrives for a closed-door meeting with Republican senators who are expected to abandon a proposal for $1 billion in security money for the White House complex and President Donald Trump's ballroom after it has failed to win enough party support, at the Capitol in Washington, Thursday, May 21, 2026. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
