"As much as they hoped it wouldn't be the case, the Jazz's worst fears were realized Sunday with confirmation that Mehmet Okur ruptured his left Achilles tendon when he went down in the second quarter of Saturday's Game 1 loss to the Nuggets.

Jazz general manager Kevin O'Connor said initial expectations are that Okur

will miss three to six months, though the team will know more after he undergoes surgery this week to repair what was described as a complete tear of the Achilles.

"It used to be a career-ending injury," O'Connor said. "Now guys come back from it, and some guys have come back and played extremely well; other guys haven't, so we'll just have to wait and see."

Already staggered after dropping Wednesday's regular-season finale to Phoenix, losing Andrei Kirilenko to his third calf strain in a month and then falling in Game 1 to Denver, the Jazz suffered their biggest blow yet with Okur's injury.

"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.""