USA/TUR – Okur out of play-offs after tearing Achilles tendon

DENVER (NBA/2010 FIBA World Championship) - The Utah Jazz have been left reeling by the news that Mehmet Okur tore his left Achilles tendon in the club’s defeat at the Denver Nuggets on Saturday and will not play anymore this post-season.

Okur, who spoke passionately last week about his desire to play for Turkey at this summer's FIBA World Championship (August 28 to September 12), suffered the injury as he drove to the basket in the second quarter of the opening game of the Western Conference play-off series.

The 30-year-old will have surgery and then rest for three months before beginning his rehabilitation.

"It's a sad injury, bad injury, I wish him the best," said Jazz point guard Deron Williams, who will represent Team USA this summer in Istanbul.

"Memo's a big part of our team. He stretches the defense. He's a guy you really can't replace just because his inside-outside game is really unmatched."

Okur has had setbacks before.

Last year, he was slowed by a hamstring injury.

He had put that behind him and was a huge factor for Utah all season.

"How things change so quickly," Okur said on his website, memo13.com.

"If someone asked me 10 days ago what do you think, I would have said at least a Western Conference final.

"But now I just wish my teammates the best."

Okur had been bothered by his left Achilles tendon and received a pain-killing injection before Saturday’s game.

Utah Jazz general manager Kevin O'Connor insisted that had nothing to do with Okur rupturing his tendon.

"We would never have put a player in a compromising position if there was any indication that the shot would have masked anything or done anything like that," he said.

"We would have never done that. We'd never put a game ahead of a player's health. ... That's not in our DNA.

"If you saw the play again, he slipped on the one leg and all the torque came down on the other leg and caught him in a perfect storm, so to speak."

Another Team USA star, Jazz big man Carlos Boozer, talked about Okur on Sunday.

"For it to end like this is horrible," Boozer said.

“He had tears in his eyes last night."

FIBA