MILWAUKEE — Milwaukee Bucks guard Damian Lillard likely will be sidelined indefinitely. The team said last Tuesday that he has deep vein thrombosis (DVT) in his right calf and is taking blood-thinning medication.

What You Need To Know

  • Milwaukee Bucks guard Damian Lillard likely will be sidelined indefinitely

  • The team said last Tuesday that he has deep vein thrombosis in his right calf 

  • Lillard is on blood thinners, according to the team

  • A Wisconsin vascular surgeon explained the causes and treatments for DVT

Deep vein thrombosis is a blood clot disorder that can be acute or chronic. 

Dr. Courtney Morgan, a vascular surgeon and associate professor of surgery at the UW School of Medicine and Public Health, weighed in on the diagnosis.

“Deep vein thrombosis is a fairly common problem that can happen in the blood vessels,” she said. “Our deep veins are within our muscles, usually next to our major arteries, and they all come together in a larger vein that brings the blood back to our heart to get oxygenated and sent back out to our bodies.”

Morgan said the most common place to get DVT is in the leg.

“It is much more common to happen in the lower extremity,” she said. “There can be swelling of the leg, pain of the leg and what we want to prevent is for that blood clot to migrate up to the heart and go to the lungs, causing what’s called a pulmonary embolus.”

Morgan explained that DVT is more commonly an acute, or new problem, as opposed to a problem that reoccurs.

“There are three aspects for our blood clotting versus bleeding that always have to be in balance to allow us to form blood clots versus snot form blood clots because our blood does need to be able to clot if we’re injured,” she said. “Hypercoagulability, stasis and vessel wall injury.”

Morgan said while the prognosis for DVT for athletes varies, it is something that is “very recoverable,” the treatment for it being a blood thinner, which Lillard is reported to be on.

“When patients are on a blood thinner, if they were to have a major injury from their sport, they could have a bleed from that,” she said. “We need to balance the risk of treating this blood clot versus a safe return to sport in a way that they aren’t going to get a bleeding injury from that.”

UW star volleyball player Sarah Franklin is a former patient of Morgan’s. Franklin had surgery for a blood clot condition in 2023.  

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