Mounting injuries add to burden of rookies
No serious damage was revealed in an MRI on Wednesday for Wizards forward Andray Blatche, who remains day-to-day after straining his right shoulder in a fall and exiting Washington’s loss to Milwaukee on Tuesday.
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But the Wizards (16-47) remain severely depleted in the experience department as Rashard Lewis (right knee soreness) didn’t practice Wednesday and is in the midst of seeking a second medical opinion after saying last week that season-ending knee surgery seemed likely. Josh Howard has missed the last three games with a strained left hamstring, leaving career journeyman Maurice Evans as the only healthy member of the Washington roster with more than three years of experience.
“When you don’t have main guys, this is a talent league, and teams that win are teams that have talent — and veteran talent, usually,” said Wizards coach Flip Saunders, who used an all-rookie lineup for four minutes against the Bucks but wasn’t quite ready to give the unit an extended look.
“They can do things well for short periods,” Saunders said. “But they don’t have enough scoring to be able to sustain it over a 24-minute span.”
Jordan Crawford, coming off a career-best 22 points, knows what he and his young teammates need to provide while they’re being leaned on heavily.
“Just bring energy the whole game,” Crawford said. “We play with energy, but we do it in spurts. We don’t do it the whole [time]. The end of the second and the beginning of the third is where we have trouble. If we just maintain how we play out of the first quarter and in the fourth, we’ll be pretty good.”
