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With the Wizards already struggling to find someone who can hit DAGGERS! for them, and having played without Gilbert Arenas all season and now Caron Butler for the last 10 games, you would think they would be due for some good news. You would be wrong.

Washington Wizards all-star forward Caron Butler has a partial tear of a labrum in his left hip, the team announced Wednesday. It is not known how long the injury will keep him out of the lineup. The team said he will be reevaluated next week.

Ouch. As the Post points out, the injury was originally diagnosed as a strained hip flexor is clearly much worse. You really have to wonder, if you're the Wizards front office and coaching staff, how much do you put into this season? They're still inexplicably the sixth seed in the East (honestly, what does that say about you, Eastern Conference?), but with the possibility of not having Gil or Caron makes the entire notion of a playoff "run" moot. DeShawn Stevenson and Antawn Jamison are only so good.

I'm by no means suggesting that the Wizards should do anything obnoxious like tank games (karma's not finished with you yet, Doc). However, if I were in charge, I'd probably shut down Butler for the season, tell Gil to hold off on opting out (he'd be better to wait anyway, obviously) and not freak out if a couple of teams passed me on a freefall out of the playoff race. Again, there's a huge difference between "tanking" (2007 Celtics) and "not playing guys with torn muscles".

HT: Bullets Forever