The Portland Trail Blazers are trading Damian Lillard to play alongside Giannis Antetokounmpo with the Milwaukee Bucks, a person with knowledge of the agreement said Wednesday. The deal ends Lillard’s 11-year run with the Blazers and a three-month saga surrounding his wish to be moved elsewhere in hopes of winning an NBA title.

The seven-time All-Star — a player so elite that he was selected to the NBA’s 75th anniversary team — goes from the Blazers to the Bucks in a three-team deal that sends Jrue Holiday from Milwaukee to Portland, Deandre Ayton from the Phoenix Suns to the Blazers and Jusuf Nurkic from the Blazers to the Suns, according to the person who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because none of the involved teams had announced the agreement.

As with all trades, it cannot be finalized until NBA attorneys review the terms and approve the deal.

It became known on July 1 that Lillard asked the Blazers for a trade, which he was long speculated to be considering given his desire to play for a contender and Portland not seeming to have much of a chance with its current roster.

He wanted to go to the Miami Heat and made that clear. The Blazers decided not to accommodate that request, and instead it’s the Bucks who now have an incredibly strong 1-2 punch of Lillard and Antetokounmpo heading into the new season.

The trade continues the Bucks’ dramatic offseason makeover in response to their surprising first-round playoff loss to the Heat.

They followed that up by firing coach Mike Budenholzer and replacing him with Adrian Griffin, who spent the last five seasons as a Toronto Raptors assistant. Now they’re trading away the two-time All-Star Holiday to acquire Lillard, a seven-time All-NBA selection.

The acquisition of Lillard comes after Antetokounmpo, a two-time MVP, told The New York Times over the summer that he wanted to see how committed the Bucks are toward winning another championship before deciding whether to sign a long-term deal to stay in Milwaukee.

Antetokounmpo’s contract runs through the 2024-25 season with a player option for 2025-26.

Bringing Lillard to Milwaukee certainly suggests the commitment is there. It also keeps the high-scoring guard away from the Heat, one of the Bucks’ biggest Eastern Conference challengers.

When the Blazers made Lillard’s request public, general manager Joe Cronin said he would do “what’s best for the team” while grudgingly seeking to facilitate Lillard’s wishes.

In the end, the deal with Bucks is what Cronin and the Blazers deemed best for all involved. It took a massive package to make the trade happen, especially because Lillard is owed a ransom over the next four years. He will make almost $46 million this season and could make as much as $216 million over the next four years if he exercises his option for 2026-27.

It will be a large, and possibly very worthwhile, investment because acquiring Lillard figures to make the Bucks even more of a title contender. He averaged 32.2 points last season, has averaged at least 24 in each of the last eight seasons and has an offensive ignitability that few players possess.

He became just the seventh player in NBA history to score more than 70 points in a game when he finished with 71 against the Houston Rockets on Feb. 26. The other names on that list are Wilt Chamberlain (who did it five times), Kobe Bryant, David Thompson, David Robinson, Elgin Baylor and Donovan Mitchell.

All six of the other players were between 23 and 28 when they had their 70-point games. Lillard was 32, a clear indicator that — even after 11 NBA seasons — he’s far from past his prime.

He has been great. The Blazers have not. And evidently he didn’t see that changing anytime soon.

Lillard was beloved in Portland, but the speculation about his future with the team only intensified when the Blazers took point guard Scoot Henderson with the No. 3 draft pick in June rather than package the pick for a proven commodity that could immediately help transform the team into a contender.

The Blazers won only four playoff series in Lillard’s 11 seasons, getting to the Western Conference finals once. They went 33-49 last season, the second consecutive year of finishing well outside the playoff picture.

That’s not Lillard’s fault. His career average of 25.2 points ranks 11th in NBA history among players who have appeared in at least 500 games. He has 17 games of at least 50 points — two of them in the playoffs — and is a past rookie of the year, teammate of the year and winner of the NBA’s citizenship award.

He has been an Olympic gold medalist, was the unanimous selection as MVP of the seeding games when the “bubble” season resumed at Walt Disney World during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and won the 3-point contest at All-Star weekend in February.

And he has a flair for drama. His series-winning shot to eliminate the Oklahoma City Thunder from the 2019 NBA playoffs — a step-back 3-pointer over Paul George from nearly 40 feet as time expired — is one of the iconic postseason moments in NBA history.

AP’s Steve Megargee in Milwaukee contributed.