The Wizards 104-99 win over the Detroit Pistons last night at the Verizon Center evened the season series to 2-2, solidified D.C.’s grip on the top spot in the Eastern Conference, and has rendered it extremely probable that Eddie Jordan will coach the East’s All-Star Team in Vegas. Good news all around then, except for the small matter of Antawn Jamison re-injuring the left knee he tweaked playing Boston on January 20th. Jamison suffered the injury with about six and a half minutes left to play in the first quarter. With the Big Three reduced to a Big Two, the Wizards were nonetheless able to persevere against a good Detroit team thanks to a combination of strong performances from the remaining stars and a freakishly efficient 7-8 shooting night from DeShawn Stevenson.
Jamison is scheduled to undergo an MRI today rather than travel with the team to Toronto for a matchup with the Raptors. If he misses a significant spell of time, it could pose a serious problem for the team. The Wizards bench has been suspect all season, and while DC hasn’t relied on Jamison to perform quite as well as Gilbert Arenas or Caron Butler, his backup is significantly worse.
Indeed, it’s not clear who his backup is. Jamison plays almost forty minutes a night and Darius Songaila, who was projected to play the four, has been injured all year. At times during the season Jordan’s used Jarvis Hayes in that role, but he’s seriously undersized to play the position. The inexperienced and defensively suspect Andray Blatche has also seen some minutes at power forward but has yet to win Jordan’s confidence. Last night, the team primarily relied heavily on third-string center Calvin Booth who put up a decent four point, five rebound, two block performance in 21 minutes, but Jordan hasn’t committed to repeating the effort. Realistically, unless Blatche takes an unexpected leap forward or Stevenson starts offering 87 percent field goal shooting on a regular basis, Wizards fans had best hope Jamison doesn’t miss too much time or the team’s stay in first place may prove short-lived.
Photo by Flickr user Kevin 813, used under a Creative Commons license.
