ORLANDO, FLA. (AP) - Gilbert Arenas will miss at least the first two regular-season games for the Washington Wizards with a strained tendon in his right ankle.
Arenas was in a walking boot and missed his fourth straight practice Wednesday. Wizards coach Flip Saunders said Arenas will be reevaluated by doctors but will be out Thursday at Orlando and Saturday at Atlanta.
“He’s definitely not going to play these two games,” Saunders said. “We’ll evaluate and hopefully both of these days in the boot will let that, right now the tendon is inflamed, we got to get that thing to settle down. Once it settles down and some of that fluid gets out of it he’s going to have a better chance at playing.”
Arenas injured the ankle during training camp, then later missed two preseason games with a strained right groin. He is attempting to come back from last season’s 50-game suspension for a felony gun conviction.
Arenas again did not talk to reporters after Wednesday’s practice. But teammates said publicly that Arenas will be sorely missed.
“Unfortunately, we won’t have Gilbert,” guard Kirk Hinrich said. “But we can’t control it. We have to go out there and try to execute our game plan and we’ll see what happens.”
This is the latest setback in Arenas’ attempted comeback.
Arenas also faked an injury earlier this preseason, with Saunders announcing before an exhibition against Atlanta that the guard would miss the contest with a sore left knee. Then Arenas revealed after the game he pretended to have a bum knee to give teammate Nick Young a chance to start.
Arenas was fined $50,000 by the Wizards for his deception. That joined a long line of escapades, and Arenas is still trying to repair his image after the felony conviction for bringing guns into the Washington locker room last season.
The Wizards were in Florida a day early to get away from the annual Washington International Horse Show that has taken over the Verizon Center.
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