Caron Butler's Injury Is Bad News For The Dallas Mavericks - SBNation.com

Caron Butler's Injury Is Bad News For The Dallas Mavericks - SBNation.com: "Jan 4, 2011 - 'Tis the season for NBA players to get injured, apparently. Over the past couple of weeks, we've seen Dirk Nowitzki, Gerald Wallace, Andre Iguodala, Caron Butler, Danilo Gallinari, Brandon Roy and Kevin Garnett go down and be forced to miss action. It's a cruel part of basketball that often comes into play at the worst possible time.

Most of those players should be okay by the end of the year, so there isn't much reason for those teams to worry. The two that probably won't be OK are Roy and Butler. Roy's injury issues were well-chronicled by Yahoo! Sports' Kelly Dwyer, so I won't rehash them here. Clearly, his debilitating knees have become a major issue for the Trail Blazers.

Butler, on the other hand, is a little bit different. There's a chance he could miss the rest of the season with a torn patella tendon, depending on the results of an MRI. Even if he has simply a partial tear, he's likely to miss a couple months. Dallas is likely going to have to soldier forward for the duration of the season without his contributions.

Unlike Roy, Butler isn't the face of the Mavericks. He's not a superstar, where you know losing him is going to kill your season. And yet, I really think Dallas is going to have a lot of problems replacing Butler's steady contributions going forward. This could be a bigger loss than people think.

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