Foot Pain Seizes Jaric

In the latest blow to the Clippers’ playoff hopes, Marko Jaric returned to Los Angeles on Sunday for further tests and a more definitive evaluation of his sore right foot, one day after Kerry Kittles flew back to seek treatment for a degenerative disk in his lower back.

Jaric and Kittles were projected to be the Clippers’ starting guards, but because of injuries Jaric has sat out 18 of the team’s 51 games, Kittles 40.

They have played together in five games, none since December.

Jaric was reactivated last month after sitting out 17 games because of a stress fracture in his right foot. He said he started experiencing pain in a different part of the foot during a Feb. 6 loss at Philadelphia but continued to play until it grew so intense in Friday’s loss at Washington that he asked to be taken out.

An MRI exam was performed Saturday.

“It’s not something that I felt right away,” Jaric said Sunday before leaving Toronto. “It just felt slowly and slowly like my foot was on fire; I felt a lot of pain. After sitting one month on the side, you don’t want to think that your injury is going to come back or something like that, so I tried to play through that. Everybody knows how important this trip is for us.”

The Clippers said that the latest injury was not related to the previous one, but a subdued Jaric said, “Of course it’s related. Because of that injury I had, of course I didn’t run properly and I didn’t use my foot the right way and then other injuries came.”

Jaric, who ended last season on the injured list because of a stress fracture in his left foot, declined a chance to play in the Athens Olympics, the Serb instead spending the summer rehabilitating and training in hopes of improving his standing among NBA point guards this season. He’ll be a restricted free agent July 1.

“It’s an important moment in my career, an important moment for the team,” he said, “ ... and knowing I can’t be there to help and of course show what I can do, it’s so sad and so frustrating.”