Despite a sprained right wrist, Gilbert Arenas is expected to play tonight as the Washington Wizards look to even their first round playoff series on the road against the Cleveland Cavaliers, after losing a very winnable Game One 93-86 on Saturday. Arenas, still making his way back from knee surgery, injured the wrist late in Game One as he fouled LeBron James.

Arenas started out hot in Game One, hitting his first four three point attempts on his way to 24 points in 27 minutes. But he and his teammates failed to produce late in the game, missing shot after shot while watching an 84-82 lead vanish as James took over in the clutch like he has done the previous two years. Antawn Jamison totaled 23 points and 19 rebounds but, like Arenas, missed his share of shots over the last four minutes. And lets not even talk about DeShawn Stevenson’s 1-9 shooting night. For all his talk about the “overrated” James (32 points, 6 rebounds and 4 assists), he needs to do something to back it up.

There’s no need to panic yet, though. Other than James and center Zydrunas Ilgauskas, Cleveland’s starters shot just 5-20 from the field (including a 0 point, 6 rebound performance from the ghost of Ben Wallace). The Wizards could also use a boost from their bench in Game Two as well. They didn’t do much scoring in Game One (a measly three points outside of Gil’s 24) but they did the little things, as evidenced by their positive +/- results.

The tip is at 7 p.m. on TNT. Game Three is Thursday night at 8 p.m. at the Verizon Center.

Photo by Kyle Gustafson.