Patrick Beverley wasn’t even officially a member of the Milwaukee Bucks yet, and on his live stream Thursday following a phone call that informed him of his trade from Philadelphia he said, “I gotta get my relationship right with Dame.”

And as Bucks guard Damian Lillard walked out of Fiserv Forum after the Bucks lost to Minnesota later that night, he knew the questions about their contentious past were coming. But for him, he didn’t feel like it would prevent them from setting that aside to work toward a championship goal.

“We are professional basketball players – that’s the first thing,” Lillard said. “As competitors and as men, we’ve had some differences. Me and him, we’ve just had a fair share of ‘em. I don’t think he would shy away from the reality of that and I’m definitely not going to. But, I don’t not respect him as a man and I don’t not respect what he brings to a team or to the game.

“Now that we teammates, we not just gonna become overnight best friends, but you know, I think we both are going to have that respect for reach other that’s going to allow the door to be open for us to be able to work together and try to accomplish our ultimate goal and that’s the only thing that matters.”

The two guards have had testy on- and off-court exchanges since 2020, in which an injured Beverley celebrated wildly from the Los Angeles Clippers bench after Lillard missed two free throws that could have put his Portland team ahead by a point in the final seconds of an eventual Clippers win. The pair then exchanged jabs in social media posts over Chris Paul in 2022 and then had enough of a verbal confrontation during a set of Lillard free throws in 2023 that the officials stopped the game between the Trail Blazers and Beverley’s Lakers. Beverley ended up getting a technical foul in that moment and Lillard called out his then-opponent again in a social media post.

“We’re not gonna come here; it ain’t gonna be like no standoff, you know what I’m saying?” Lillard said. “We’ve been opponents the whole time so we haven’t had to – after whatever altercation or whatever it was – we never had to have no interaction, you know? Obviously I understand why it’s a big thing but it won’t be an issue at all.”

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Lillard says playing with Beverley 'won’t be an issue at all.'