New Orleans Pelicans guard CJ McCollum made his first appearance on ESPN's First Take recently and he had quite a few things to say. One of his more contentious statements centered around players sitting out games when healthy. The 30-year-old veteran got brutally honest in his message as he described how this processed work during his time playing alongside Damian Lillard with the Portland Trail Blazers.

McCollum confessed that players sitting out games is indeed a reality within the NBA — or at least for the Blazers. The former Most Improved Player winner then explained the rationale behind the same and why this is a necessity when it comes to protecting the players and the teams' interests:

“(You) Talked about healthy players sitting out. There's this misconception, if you will, that players just choose to sit out games,” McCollum started. “… Full disclosure here, I played in Portland for a long time with Damian Lillard, everybody knows that. There was times when we'd go through the calendar and we would be supposed to pick rest days. Dame and I would look at each other and we go through ‘designated rest days'… We would agree to sit games. The game would come up on the schedule, I would look at Dame, he would look at me, I would say, ‘I'm playing tonight. You playing tonight?' He'd be like, ‘Yeah.' We would laugh about it because in reality, we sit those games and people think we're sitting healthy. In reality, the team's job is to protect that eight-figure, nine-figure endorsement, and the way to protect that is to shield us from games where it's considered ‘high risk' of injury.”

It's a poorly kept secret within the league that teams opt to sit their players despite not having any injuries. This is frowned upon by the NBA and depending on the situation, some teams get fined for their actions. McCollum just spilled the beans on the Blazers here after confessing that both Lillard and himself would pick specific days to sit out and rest.

McCollum eloquently explained why this is sort of a necessary evil in the game and how at the end of the day, it's all about prioritizing the safety of the players.