An MRI conducted on Davis Bertans‘ injured right calf revealed a Grade 2 strain, a source tells Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN (Twitter link). According to Wojnarowski, Bertans will require four to six weeks to recover from the injury.
It’s bad news for the Wizards and the veteran forward, who suffered the injury in Monday’s win over Philadelphia after scoring 15 points in just 23 minutes. However, given that Washington is down 3-1 in the series, it may not have mattered if Bertans had just been ruled out for a few days rather than for a few weeks — his season would likely be over either way.
Still, considering the Sixers are dealing with an important injury of their own – Joel Embiid (knee) is also undergoing an MRI Tuesday – the door is slightly ajar for the Wizards to make the series interesting. If they’re going to do so, they’ll have to lean on power forward Rui Hachimura to play an increased role. While he’ll be hard-pressed to replicate Bertans’ floor-spacing ability, Hachimura has knocked down 8-of-12 threes through four games.
After signing a five-year, $80M contract last offseason, Bertans had an up-and-down 2020-21 season. In 57 games (25.7 MPG), he recorded 11.5 PPG on .404/.395/.870 shooting, which represented a dip in his production from ’19-20. He should be fully healthy well in advance of the start of the second season of that five-year deal.
