Damian Lillard’s Instagram Live ‘just a coincidence’ with Will Smith’s ‘Miami’ song, agent says

When Portland star Damian Lillard was seen smiling and laughing to the sounds of Will Smith’s famous song, “Miami” on Instagram Live on Friday in a 45-second clip of captured video that went viral, it was only natural to wonder if he was sending some sort of message to the Trail Blazers about his possible desire to be traded to the Miami Heat.

But his agent, Aaron Goodwin, chose to clarify and contextualize the scene with The Athletic on Friday night. As Goodwin shared, Lillard is currently on a “working vacation” in Paris and was at a club when the DJ, presumably, chose to make light of his uncertain and well-chronicled situation.

“The music was just a coincidence,” Goodwin told The Athletic. “Damian’s not disrespectful. He’s not an instigator, so he’s not going to do anything out of character. There would be no reason for him to do that. That’s why he laughed (in the video). It’s a funny coincidence that a DJ would put that on.”

In all, Goodwin said, Lillard went live for approximately 15 minutes. The “Miami” song wasn’t the end of it, either, as the DJ also played the Whitney Houston classic “I Wanna Dance With Somebody”a that includes the lyric, “I wanna feel the Heat with somebody.”

Make no mistake, though, the voracious online appetite for clues about Lillard’s state of mind is born out of a very real situation.

The seven-time All-Star’s future in Portland has been uncertain for quite some time now, and the Heat have long been known to be a top candidate to land him if he ever decides to ask for a trade. Add in the fact that the video came just hours after the NBA draft, when the Trail Blazers added dynamic young talent in Scoot Henderson and Kris Murray but none of the star-level veteran help Lillard is known to covet, and there was a widespread social media assumption that this video was a case of Lillard being calculated.

As it turns out, Goodwin said, it was a DJ having a little late-night fun at his expense.

(Photo: Soobum Im / USA Today)