Damian Lillard Concussion Protocol: NBA Referee Revealed To Have Smacked Bucks Star Accidentally

Damian Lillard has had a fairly good start to his 2024-25 NBA campaign. This of course, isn’t including a couple of his games that saw him shoot incredibly inefficiently from the field. One such game occurred in the Bucks’ bout against the Celtics. However, him suffering a concussion at the end of the 3^rd quarter may be a reason for why he couldn’t get himself back on track in the 4^th.

Chris Haynes reported earlier today Dame has been placed in concussion protocol and will miss Milwaukee’s next game against the Toronto Raptors. As this news hit Bucks fans’ timelines, it brought up the question of how Lillard received this concussion. As it turns out, it was due to an NBA official.

With 2.2 seconds remaining on the clock towards the end of the 3^rd quarter, Dame inbounded the ball to Giannis Antetokounmpo at the top of the key. Giannis drove the ball to the rim but couldn’t get his shot off in time. Ref Eric Dalen signalled the ‘no good’ hand gesture and in doing so, inadvertently hit Dame across the head with his arm.

Dame was by the ref when he was waving this shot off. The ref’s movement hit him and put him on the protocol pic.twitter.com/gS5QbRpfO2

— ⌚️ (@D4M3TIME) November 12, 2024

There is no official video of this taking place but this has been stated by several patrons who attended the game who claim they saw this happen. The stories from all of them seem to line up so there must be some truth to this.

Wait… I actually know what happened.

This isn’t a joke… at the end of the 3rd, the ref signaled “no good” because Giannis didn’t get a shot off in time, and he accidentally smacked Dame in the head. I remember seeing it but didn’t think much of it. https://t.co/lsVc3HPNZg

— Nathan Marzion (@nathanmarzion) November 12, 2024

The referee did that. He was waving off the shot at the end of the quarter and on his swing back he swiped Dame across the face inadvertently

— Spencer Vondra (@SpencerVonNBA) November 12, 2024

It is being reported that following this hit, the All-Star guard felt bouts of dizziness and while he did complete the game, he clearly wasn’t in his best state. In all fairness however, he wasn’t exactly having the ‘game of his life’ prior to this hit.

He shot 4-15 from the field and an abysmal 1-8 from beyond the arc. The smack he received seemed to have altered his shot slightly as well as his misses in the 4^th quarter were fairly off the mark. His 3 at the 6:05 was clean off the back-iron while his 3 at 4:04 missed nearly everything as it barely grazed the left side of the rim to avoid an air-ball.

Lillard has not come out and spoken about the concussion as of yet. His timeline for return has not been set either but there is a possibility he could be available for Wednesday’s game against the Pistons.