Utah Jazz: Knee injury ends Millsap's games-played streak

From the time he started hooping it up as a kid, continuing all the way through middle school, high school, college and the 194th game of his NBA career, Paul Millsap had perfect attendance for basketball games that counted.

That finally changed Friday. For the first time in his life, the 23-year-old didn't play or even don a uniform — something that took doctor's orders to make happen, of course.

Millsap got his excused-absence note — and a rare restraining order from the court, the basketball court, that is — after an MRI taken on Christmas Eve revealed that he has a sprained posterior cruciate ligament in his left knee.

No tear was spotted, but Millsap — who laughingly said he'd never heard of a "PCL" before this week — is expected to miss 7-to-10 days because of the injury that happened in the first quarter of Tuesday's pre-Christmas-road-trip-ending loss at Milwaukee.

Millsap may wear a brace as part of the treatment, which will include a lot of ice and rest for the knee that he feared was hurt worse after hearing it pop.

"I'm healing. It's going to take a few days," he said Friday. "They (team medical staff) say about 7-to-10 days, depending on how I feel, but hopefully, you know, it'll be sooner than that."

Millsap won't travel with the team to Houston today as he recovers, including partially, perhaps, from simply not going against Dallas. His streak of 194-straight games played was the seventh-longest in the NBA, making Friday a bit weird for him.

"This is my first game ever missing, so it's tough for me to just sit there and watch the rest of the team go out there without me," Millsap said. "But it'll be all right."

The Jazz organization has now had players miss 88 games due to injuries. Millsap, who had thumb surgery in the offseason, was bummed he finally got bit by the bug, too.

"You get real frustrated when something like that happens," Millsap said. "You always think the worst when it (does) happen. Luckily for me, it wasn't as severe as it could've been."

Millsap doesn't regret coming back and playing the entire second half Tuesday after initial X-rays revealed no structural damage in the knee.

He also said his knee actually has improved over the past few days.