The Curse

Wizards center Brendan Haywood, who had the best season of his career last year, will have surgery and miss the next 4-6 months.

Washington Wizards President Ernie Grunfeld announced today that center Brendan Haywood will have surgery to repair a torn dorsal scapho-lunate ligament in his right wrist. He originally suffered the injury during last week’s training camp in Richmond, VA.

Haywood visited two hand specialists in New York earlier today who both concluded that surgery was necessary to repair the torn ligament. No timetable will be determined for Haywood’s return until after surgery, which has yet to be scheduled.

“Brendan worked extremely hard over the summer after having a career year last season,” said Grunfeld. “This is disappointing, but we’re confident that he will do everything necessary to recover from this injury and continue that progress.”

Haywood averaged career highs of 10.6 points, 7.2 rebounds and 1.7 blocks last season while shooting .528 (316-599) from the field.

The news was much better for Antawn Jamison, who was injured during the preseason opener in Dallas.
Wizards forward Antawn Jamison has been diagnosed with a right knee contusion after an MRI today revealed no other damage. No timetable has been set for his return, but Jamison is expected to be ready for the start of the regular season.
So The Captawn should be healthy for the opener, but the Wizards are now without two starters, Gilbert Arenas and Brendan Haywood. The team proved it can win more than half their games without Arenas, though they can’t go far in the playoffs without him. Without Arenas’ scoring, though, the team has to slow down its pace and play better defense. The loss of Haywood is a terrible blow, therefore, because he was easily Washington’s best defender last year, the one who controls opposing big men and serves as the last line of defense for gambling guards. The Wizards will have to do their best to make up for his loss with a combination of Etan Thomas, Andray Blatche and youngsters Oleksiy Pecherov and Javale McGee.
Speaking of McGee, the rookie had a monster game last night as the Wizards got their first preseason win, beating the Memphis Grizzlies 89-80. Ivan Carter lays it down for us:

After JaVale McGee threw down yet another monster dunk – this one to complete a fast break in the fourth quarter of Washington’s 89-80 win over the Grizzlies tonight – I looked over at the Wiz bench where the veterans were hooting and hollering. 
Caron Butler looked over at me, kind of raised his eyebrows and gave me a look that said: “Are you seeing this? Kid ain’t bad is he?” No, he isn’t.

Now, I’m not going to over do it and starting making the kid sound like the second coming of Wilt but, he is off to a good start.

Tonight, McGee helped the Wiz even their preseason record at 1-1 by coming off the bench to score 20 points on 8-of-12 shooting with eight rebounds and three blocks. He outplayed Grizzlies rookie center Marc Gasol (the younger brother of Pau) who you may remember, was not a bad player on that Spanish National team in the Olympics.

At three different points, a member of the Memphis media rolled up to me and asked some version of the question: “Who is that guy?” A scout who was here from another team commented to me: “He’s raw but I can see why they like him.”

The most impressive things about McGee so far, in order, 1) He’s not the least bit intimidated. Maybe that will change against the Dwight Howards and Amare Stoudemires of the world but so far, the kid is just coming out to play. No woofing and fake tough guy stuff, just ball.

2) As I’ve written several times, he’s very, very, very athletic. On one play tonight, Dee Brown – the quickest guy on the floor – and McGee trapped a Memphis guard at the top of the key and said guard (can’t remember who, might have been Kyle Lowry), lost the ball). By the time Brown scooped it up and started to dribble the other way, McGee was long striding past him and he then capped the play with an alley-oop dunk. He also had a couple of nasty one-handers and a reverse dunk. Last night, he had a play where he bent down in a defensive stance, waved his long arms in front of him and stole the ball from Dirk Nowitzki. He took off the other way on a break.

3) His shot is smooth for a 7-footer. He’s going to make those 10-15 footers on a consistent basis because he has good, sound stroke and he shoots it way over his head where nobody is going to block it.

Coach Eddie, who isn’t known for giving big minutes to rookies, likes what he’s seen so far:

We want him to run the offense, not necessarily look for his scoring opportunities and tonight, he did both. He ran the offense first and then looked at some scoring opportunities. But he got out in the open floor number one. That’s what he can do. If he can run and score in the open floor with Dee pushing and our other guys filling the lane, that’s good. That’s what he can do. But he also sticks his nose in there. For a guy that’s athletic and a little light in the pants, he sticks his nose in there and that shows that he’s willing to do the things he has to do to make us successful.”

That’s about as nice as Jordan is going to be to a rookie right now. I understand Jordan’s reluctance to rely on the league’s most inexperienced players, but he may not have a choice this year with Haywood missing most of the season, at least. I’ll have some more thoughts on this later.