Earlier in the week, Portland Trail Blazers superstar Damian Lillard announced that he intends to skip the rest of the season — if an when it resumes — should his team have no chance of making the playoffs. This was met with some criticism from all over, and recently, the 29-year-old has double down on his earlier statement.

In an appearance on ESPN's “Jalen & Jacoby,” Lillard clarified his stance, claiming that his earlier remark was misinterpreted.

“I mean, I felt like the way the story was written, it was taken out of context because it was a casual conversation,” Lillard said, via John Chick of theScore.

“And it was like ‘expletive this, expletive that,' but it wasn't a demonstrative statement.”

Damian Lillard went on to explain that he would still be more than willing to take the floor again under the right circumstances.

“Obviously as players, we want to play, but we want to play for something -especially if we're in position to play for that in the first place,” he added.

“I feel like a play-in tournament would be perfect, just because we actually were in striking distance and also had enough games to get in the playoff. But to that point, if they did decide that we're just gonna go straight to the playoffs, obviously we would all be disappointed.”

The Blazers are currently sitting at the ninth spot in the West, and are three and a half games behind the eight-seeded Memphis Grizzlies. Clearly, Lillard is hoping that the league pursue a play-in tournament, which will give Portland a shot of making the playoffs. Anything outside that seems like a risk Lillard is not willing to take.