The Sports Note

Marc Stein says that Jamison, Butler and Arenas make up the 8th best trio in the league. That feels way too low but with the 0-5 start to the season its hard to argue.

Antwan Jamison and Caron Butler are your ‘07-’08 Wizards captains. Sounds about right.

I didn’t have the strength to write yesterday about the Wizards getting blown out by 20 in Charlotte on Tuesday. And if this wasn’t so important I might not be writing about last nights loss to the Bobcats AT HOME but, as surely you’ve read/heard by now, our injury woes have gone from bad (losing Butler) to worse:

Consecutive losses to the lottery-bound Charlotte Bobcats would have been painful enough for the slumping Washington Wizards, but the outcome of last night’s game at Verizon Center was reduced to secondary status the moment three-time all-star guard Gilbert Arenas fell to the court clutching his left knee late in the first quarter.

Arenas, who didn’t start the game as punishment for missing a pregame shoot-around, suffered a sprained left knee when Charlotte’s Gerald Wallace fell into the side of Arenas’s leg after making a sensational reverse layup.

Arenas limped off the court with some assistance, did not return and will undergo an MRI exam today. The team is expected to announce a timetable for his recovery based on the test results.

How many knee sprains can one team have in a season? Jamison, Blatche and now Arenas. Obviously losing two in a row to the lottery-bound Bobcats sucks but losing Arenas, perhaps for the rest of the regular season, is a killer. Luckily the Knicks are awful and we are only one game away from clinching a playoff spot but a Wizards team without Caron and with a hurting Arenas is even MORE unlikely to make it out of the first round.

What else is there to say really? A season that started with so much promise is now going down the tubes. Its quite depressing.

Any chance we could rewind things to Friday afternoon and then do everything differently? Cause that was an awful, awful weekend to be a Wizards fan. First Friday night’s game against the Raptors, featuring one of the most heartbreaking plays I’ve ever watched live (I saw it on TV but it was still enough to get me to jump out of my chair and shout in frustration. To wit, Michael Ruffin screws up, as can be seen in this video right here:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cw_Y85Mi7Tg[/youtube]
(via Deadspin)

Now I’m not entirely sure what Mr. Ruffin was trying to do there…but it obviously wasn’t a good idea. I think he was trying to throw the ball far up in the air in sort of a half-celebration the games over, half burn the last few seconds off the clock kind of deal but the ball slipped a bit and he ended up giving it right to MoPete who ended up making the shot of his life. And I ended up spilling my drink on myself when the shot went in. And of course the Wizards then went on to lose in OT, which was to be expected after getting a stomach-punch like that.

Cut to Sunday when the Wizards, still reeling, played against the Bucks in Milwaukee. The Bucks were without Michael Redd (also no Andrew Bogut) but the Wizards have shown a distressing ability to lose to teams playing without their star players. I was fully prepared for a loss. But then I was pleasantly surprised as my Yahoo Sports scoreboard kept refreshing that the Wizards were actually winning and seemed to have the game in control. I left the house to attend a concert happy in the knowledge that my boys had picked themselves back up and won 121-107.

Little did I know that disaster had struck and my man Tuff Juice (Caron Butler) had been injured in the third quarter (broken hand) and more then likely lost for the year. Why God why?
It was the type of hustle play that summed up Caron Butler’s tenacity and unwillingness to give up. Unfortunately for the Washington Wizards, it also was the play that ended Butler’s season.

Milwaukee Bucks guard David Noel rebounded an Antawn Jamison miss in the third quarter of the Wizards’ 121-107 victory on Sunday and tossed a long outlet pass to forward Ruben Patterson. Butler could have easily let Patterson finish the routine fast break with an uncontested dunk — and perhaps he should have. Instead, Butler tried to block the shot — and failed. Worse, when Butler’s hand slapped the backboard, the pressure of the impact bent back his right index finger, causing a fracture. Butler knew the severity of his injury immediately, looking down at his hand and telling himself, “This thing’s broke.”

Snip

Butler didn’t join the team on its flight to Charlotte afterward and will have an MRI exam today in Washington. He wasn’t optimistic after the game. “Second round [of the playoffs], third round, possibly,” Butler said when asked about a possible return. “Right now, I probably won’t have a jersey on until next season.”

How bad is this? Wizards are 2-7 this year without Caron. We were already having a mediocre second half of the year and now we lose one of our Big 3. That doesn’t bode well for the playoffs, no matter who we face in the first round (please not the Heat, please). Anyway, like I said, awful weekend to be a Wizards fan.