Portland Trail Blazers superstar Damian Lillard says if the NBA regular season resumes without giving his team a real opportunity to make the playoffs, he won’t be a part of it.
“If we come back and they’re just like, ‘We’re adding a few games to finish the regular season,’ and they’re throwing us out there for meaningless games and we don’t have a true opportunity to get into the playoffs, I’m going to be with my team because I’m a part of the team. But I’m not going to be participating. I’m telling you that right now. And you can put that [expletive] in there,” Lillard told Yahoo Sports during a phone call.
The NBA does not have an official plan laid out for its return but it’s largely expected that if and when games do resume, they will either start with the playoffs or have a few games before jumping into the postseason. Currently, the Trail Blazers occupy the 9th seed, as they are 3.5 games behind the Memphis Grizzlies. This means that it is unlikely that Portland will make the playoffs.
“We had fought ourselves back into position to get a spot,” Lillard said. “We had our starting center and starting power forward coming back, so we had a lot to look forward to and for a great reason. Now, they’re healthy and have extra time to train and rehab while everybody’s rusty. So now, they won’t be coming back as the only rusty players. And if everybody’s rusty, we can come in here and beat everybody. “
Lillard feels that given these unique circumstances, more teams deserve a chance to play for the Championship, however unlikely that is to happen.
“It’s going to be hard to get going with no fans, you’ve been off all this time and some people are just ready for summer like, ‘(Expletive) it, I haven’t played in a long time and the season is basically over to me. Do I really care like I cared before?’ It’s going to be a lot of those factors going on and that presents a lot of room for a team to sneak some (expletive). Like, really mess around and knock some teams off and then, ‘Oh, they’re in the Western Conference finals.’ It’s room for that with this situation. So the fact that it’s possible and we wouldn’t get an opportunity at that, that’s weak to me. I ain’t getting no younger.”
