More Holiday – not Iverson – while Williams is out

After having surgery on his broken jaw yesterday, Sixers (point) guard Lou Williams will be out of the lineup for the next eight weeks.  The initial projection was that he’d be out for 2-4 weeks.

Although Williams suffered the injury in the first quarter of the Wizards game, he continued to play and finished the game with 26 points in 39 minutes.

“I was spitting out blood every time-out, but I thought it was my tooth, so I didn’t think it was as serious as it was,” said Williams. “I just continued to play, and there wasn’t a lot of pain involved because I was playing on adrenaline, obviously. But I knew something was wrong, just not to this magnitude.”

Williams was second on the team in scoring (17.4 ppg) and assists (5.1 apg) and tied for the lead in three-pointers made (18).

So now the Sixers are without Williams (17.4 ppg) and Marreese Speights (13.0 ppg) for an extended time.  In addition, they are without Elton Brand (11.5 ppg) tonight versus the Hawks.  Brand, who is out for a second straight game, is supposed to be back for Sunday’s game in San Antonio.

With Williams out for the next two months, rookie Jrue Holiday will have an opportunity to develop much quicker than he otherwise would.  As Depressed Fan wrote, it “could mean the difference between a lost rookie season and accelerated development.”  I agree 100 percent.

The Sixers aren’t going anywhere in the 2009-10 season.  While Jrue is the youngest player in the league and a bit raw, the silver lining in losing Lou for extended period is the potential development of the team’s future point guard.

And, per ESPN’s Marc Stein, the Sixers won’t be bringing back Allen Iverson, who has announced his intentions to “retire” on Wednesday.  Instead they’ll continue to give Holiday the minutes.

In his first start of the season, Holiday scored 10 points, had six assists and four turnovers in 34 minutes against the Celtics on Wednesday.

Tags: Allen Iverson, Elton Brand, jrue holiday, Lou Williams, Marreese Speights