Rashard Lewis says he is considering surgery to alleviate the nagging tendonitis issues in his right knee, but he’s not ready yet to skip out on the Wizards.
After hobbling through 29 minutes on the floor with three points and four rebounds in Wednesday’s 100-85 win over Milwaukee, Lewis said things didn’t look good as he was leaving the locker room. With a full two days before their next game, the Wizards are going to rest Lewis as much as they can, but a longer term solution may still be needed.
“Surgery is an option, just to clean it out, a scope, but it’s not something that I want to do right now,” said Lewis. “I think it’d be an option after the season, but we’re going to see how it feels over these next couple of games leading up to the break, just to decide what we’re going to do.”
Lewis said the knee has been giving him problem on and off for the last couple of seasons, but that it’s ramped up this year.
“It’s at the top of my knee,” he said. “This year it seems like it’s been an ongoing problem for some reason. It started in Orlando early in the season, and it just seems like it’s been getting worse and worse as the season’s been going on.”
“We haven’t had any days off,” said Wizards head coach Flip Saunders. “He’s been playing a lot of minutes. He went from playing the four, where basically, he’s going to be around the basket a lot, to guarding a lot of threes, chasing, moving a lot more offensively, from one side to another. He’s got a lot more wear and tear with how we’ve been using him recently. So we’re going to give him a couple of days off and hopefully, he’ll be ready to go Saturday.”
Of course, Saturday’s visit to Washington by the San Antonio Spurs (44-8), the best team in the NBA, might actually be overshadowed – who are we kidding, it’s totally overshadowed by Sunday’s showdown in Cleveland, where the Cavaliers’ 26-game losing streak (which might be 27 if they can’t beat the Los Angeles Clippers on Friday) will face off with Washington’s 25-game road losing streak.
“Depending on how it feels, I’ll see if I can go on Sunday,” said Lewis. “That’s when I’ve been having problems, on back to back games. That’s the game we need to play.”
