Portland Trail Blazers' point guard Damian Lillard has seemed indestructible in his first four seasons. However, after 275 straight games to begin his career, Lillard will miss Monday night's action against the Atlanta Hawks in Atlanta due to a plantar fasciitis injury that needs some rest to get better. The Blazers announced both Lillard and C.J. McCollum (ankle injury) will miss the road game.
Lillard re-aggravated his left heel on Sunday in the Blazers' loss to Miami, in which the Portland star had 32 points on 10-of-18 shooting to go with nine assists. From the Trail Blazers' website:
The Trail Blazers announced today that both Damian Lillard and CJ McCollum will sit out tonight’s contest versus the Hawks at Phillips Arena with injuries either aggravated or suffered during Sunday afternoon’s loss to the Heat in Miami.
Lillard will sit with plantar fasciitis in his left foot. Lillard said he had been experiencing some soreness in his left heel prior to Sunday’s game, but aggravated the injury some time in the third quarter.
“It was a little bit sore,” Lillard said of his left heel after Sunday’s game. “I took off to get in the lane one time and it just got a little tight, a little sore.”
Lillard currently holds the longest active games played streak in the NBA since joining the NBA in 2012-13. Los Angeles Clippers' center DeAndre Jordan is second with 274 games played in a row. Lillard came into the NBA as a workhorse immediately, playing the most minutes in the league during his rookie season. He averages 36.7 minutes for his career and has already cracked the 10,000-minute mark in the regular season in less than 3.5 seasons.
The pain with such a tricky injury like plantar fasciitis is just too much to have him risk further injury, and with the Blazers looking less and less like a playoff team as the season goes on, there's no need to push it with Lillard right now. Let him get rest, let the heel get better, and then put him back out there to be that dynamic scorer and leader he's already proven to be.
