Washington Wizards Must Survive Again Without Bradley Beal

With Bradley Beal‘s latest injury, we ask whether or not the Washington Wizards can survive again without one of their top players

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The Washington Wizards did enough to survive their first nine games of the season without Bradley Beal in the lineup. In fact, the Wizards reeled off seven wins during that span. Although, after another injury to the potentially, now, injury- prone shooting guard, the Wizards are going to have survive — again — without Beal.

Washington announced Wednesday that Beal has a mild stress reaction in his lower right leg and will miss the team’s final game before the NBA all-star break against the Toronto Raptors.

Beal is expected to be re-evaluated after the all-star break to determine if he’ll continue to miss time.

"[via Bradley Beal has lower-leg injury — ESPN]The stress reaction was revealed during an examination on Beal’s sore right big toe, an injury that forced him to miss Washington’s last two games.It marks the latest setback in an injury-plagued season for Beal, who missed Washington’s first nine games with a broken left wrist. The 21-year-old Beal is the Wizards’ second-leading scorer, averaging 15.0 points and 3.0 assists in 42 games this season."

The difficulty now though, as compared to missing an integral part of their team, like Beal, in the beginning of the season as to now, is that the Wizards don’t have a fresh Paul Pierce to hang its hat on at the moment. In six of the nine games that Beal missed early in the year, Pierce played north of his average minutes.

I’m not sure if they’ll have the luxury to ask Pierce to do the same this late in the season, also when they should be trying to conserve every ounce of Pierce as the playoffs near.

While it’s not exactly clear who the Wizards plan on starting in Beal’s place for the time being, because they’ve used Garrett Temple and Otto Porter in that slot during their last two games, there’s going to be big drop off between Beal and whoever is inserted depending on how long he misses.

Can they survive?

In the Eastern Conference, they will. Even if he does miss an extended amount of time. They’ll still make the playoffs and probably finish with a top-5 seed in the conference. Although, instead of potentially clinching a three seed and playing a sixth seeded team, like the Bucks or Heat, the Wizards could wind up in a first round series against Chicago or Cleveland.

That’s a pretty significant difference.

Back to the ‘can they survive’ question. Can they? Sure, but in the process they may end up hurting themselves in the long run.

The next question that needs to be asked, and answered later: is Bradley Beal injury-prone?

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