When you are a good team (Washington) and you lose one major player to injury (Gilbert Arenas), you are considered unlucky. When you are a mediocre team and you lose your three best players, what's that? Snakebitten? Cursed?

No, I know the word: F*cked.

This is absurd. There has been so much positive energy on the floor -- John Salmons is a minor star, Francisco Garcia has learned to play offense in the NBA, Beno Udrih has emerged as a starting level point guard, Spencer Hawes has not gotten hives after every rebound, Mikki Moore has become that energy big who's fun as heck to watch. Given normal circumstances, those things might all add up to a perfect cloud of tricksy 8th-seed reaching. I mean, a week ago we were discussing the absurdity of our own expectations. How foolish we are.

What's worse? The injuries threaten rebuild mode. They say Ron will be gone for a few weeks. We have seven weeks until the trade deadline. They say Mike will be back in two weeks. Why don't more big trades get made at the deadline? Because there's so much uncertainty left in the season. Adding more uncertainty in the form of recovering injuries will not help things. Anyone ready for an actionless February?

I'll have a game recap later. My rat poison tea is ready.