Sunday, March 22, 2009

Quick Arenas update

The Wizards only have 11 games remaining on their schedule, and they're trying to figure out whether Gilbert Arenas should play or not. According to Ivan Carter, the team still hasn't come up with concrete plan on what to do:

No real update on Gilbert Arenas other than to say that he and the team are still in the process of figuring out a plan for his possible return. Because Arenas did not make the trip, he has to sit down with Ed Tapscott and formulate a potential plan regarding his role, how many minutes he would play, how the team would handle the last two back-to-backs etc.

As of today, Arenas has not discussed details of such a plan with Tapscott or Ernie Grunfeld, who is in Europe scouting Ricky Rubio among other draft prospects. I do hear that Arenas was aggressively working out at Verizon Center all week and is feeling good on that knee.

It really doesn't make sense to me to have Arenas play in any of the remaining games. Look, I want to see him on the court just like every other Wizard fan. It would be nice to have something positive happen since this season has sucked. Arenas and Haywood have been out, Eddie Jordan is gone, Ed Tapscott keeps playing Antawn Jamison and Caron Butler huge minutes for no apparent reason, and besides Dominic McGuire, the team still doesn't have a clue about whether other young players such as Nick Young, Oleksiy Pecherov, or Javaris Crittenton can be significant contributors because they haven't been given consistent minutes even though the team is horrible.

But the only thing that could make the Wizards' situation infinitely worse would be to have Arenas return this season and somehow injure himself again. With the Wizards' recent stretch of luck, a freak play or accident wouldn't shock anyone. I don't know if he's healthy enough to return; no one really does because he isn't really talking. He hasn't updated his NBA.com blog since November, and except for reports of him working out or playing Nick Young in one-on-one battles after practices, he's barely mentioned at all.

Hopefully Arenas returns in top form, but he needs to be 100 percent before he gets back on the court. And if there's any chance that he's not, then I hope he waits until next season. If anything else is clear, it's that the direction of the Wizards franchise over the next few seasons depends on his health -- or lack thereof.

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