As Damian Lillard continues his rehabilitation process, he was interviewed by Chris Haynes of Yahoo! Sports and discussed whether he thinks the best is yet to come for him personally and collectively with the Portland Trail Blazers.

“I think personally my best is yet to come 100 percent," said Lillard. "This is my first time being able to take a step back and just fully address my development. Over the course of my career, there have always been things that I've wanted to correct or get better at, but maybe I had a long season and went into the playoffs and then we had a quick turnaround. Whatever the case may be, I never had this much time to fully break down my game and really challenge myself development-wise. Working on things that I'm not comfortable with all the time, things that other guys at my position do really well. I’ve had a window of time and opportunity to add to my game and to watch film with my coaches and trainers to really address those things that a lot of times might be uncomfortable. Since I had my surgery in January, I’ll have around 10 months before the start of next season. So me having that amount of time to look in the mirror to address these things and get my body right, we'll get the most out of it and I'll be the best version of myself individually. And I also think we've taken some steps back as an organization, obviously with the moves that we've made [at the trade deadline]. But we've also positioned ourselves to do something that we haven't been able to do since I've been here, which is we’ve opened up money, we got picks, we got a $22 million trade exception, we got a $6 million trade exception, we got the full mid-level, we got the biannual. We have an opportunity, and we got flexibility. There are guys we can bring in that can make us a team that can compete for a championship, but we have to execute that.”

Lillard is confident that Portland won't be continuing their rebuild into next season.

“I don't see any way that, where we are right now is even possible to be in this place next season. I just don't see that happening. There’s no way.”

Lillard was also asked whether a championship with the Blazers remains his desire.

“That's the only thing I care about, honestly. It seems like after I announced that I was having surgery, people were like, ‘Oh, he's 31 and having this done.’ Man, 31 is not old. They act like you’re old when we have guys around the league older than me that are still playing at a high level. Also, my game is not based on me playing above the rim. I'm a sniper. I shoot. I got a good step. I can think the game. I can manipulate the game, and I know how to play. My game will age well, and I don't have a history of injuries. And the one that I just had is not a bad injury to have. I'm going to come back and be fine. Like I said, my best is yet to come. And the only things that I play for at this point is I want to be the MVP of the league and I want to win the championship. And once I do those things, I feel great about the investment that I made to this game over my whole life. If I accomplish those two things, I'm walking away feeling like I literally got the most out of myself as an athlete.”