Chauncey Billups injury: Is his career over?

Chauncey Billups looked like he’d been shot. It was a simple turn to go to the man with the ball, and down he went.

Unfortunately for the Clippers, he wasn’t getting up that quickly either.

Even worse is the news that just came through, confirmed by the Los Angeles Clippers—Chauncey Billups has torn his left Achilles tendon and is out for the season.

Now that hurts.

I know you have Chris Paul and Blake Griffin and Deandre Jordan and all the hype around Lob City, but Billups is a huge, huge loss for a side that was just starting to open up a gap at the top of the division.

Expect the Los Angeles Lakers to close that gap over the remainder of this month.

Billups is a huge loss on both offense and defense – his leadership and experience will be sorely missed as will his pure passion for the game.

And at 35, you’ve got to think it’s nearly all over for Chauncey.

Billups registered his 1,000th regular season game in the National Basketball Association only last week, a feat that no ordinary basketball player can attain.

You’ve got to imagine that some of the drive that keeps that aging body on the court every night just went out the window when the injury struck.

And now that he’ll miss his dream Olympic team campaign, you’ve got to imagine what’s left for Billups to play for, considering his age.

Thirty-five is not young, and his career might very well be over.

That’s taking nothing away from the 15,000-odd points, 6,000-odd assists, 2,000-three pointers and 1,000-odd steals that Billups has chalked up throughout his illustrious career.

But when injury strikes that bad, that late in a career, it might almost be time to hang up the sneakers, the jersey and whatever else he’s wearing.

Keep the tracksuit though—he’ll need that for the bench at least for the remainder of this year.