Damian Lillard Wants a Shot at Lakers and Might Sit Out if NBA Resumes With Shortened Season

As the NBA inches closer toward the resumption of the 2020 campaign, questions are swirling as to how many regular season games will be carried out before the playoffs commence.

While it would make sense for the league to jump into the postseason as soon as possible, one particular superstar, Damian Lillard, has threatened to sit out the remainder of the year if his Portland Trail Blazers aren't given the opportunity to supplant the Memphis Grizzlies as the No. 8 seed in the Western Conference.

"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," Lillard told Yahoo! Sports on Tuesday. "But I'm not going to be participating. I'm telling you that right now."

When the NBA season was suspended in mid-March, the Trail Blazers were 29-37 with 16 games left to play, sitting just 3.5 games behind Memphis for the ninth and final playoff seed in the West. While Dame respects the season the Grizzlies have put together, he fully believes that Portland would give the Los Angeles Lakers a better fight in the first round, and understandably so.

It's hard to knock Lillard for thinking like this. Playing a few games to close out the year while being mathematically eliminated from playoff contention is the definition of pointless, especially for a player that was nursing a groin injury right before the campaign was halted.