Washington Wizards shooting guard Bradley Beal underwent successful surgery on Sunday to repair a fracture in his left wrist, the team announced Sunday in a press release. He had injured his wrist during the Wizards’ Friday night preseason loss to the Charlotte Hornets.
The Wizards’ statement says the team expects Beal to miss approximately six weeks. Originally, people close to Beal expected the recovery time to be six to eight weeks, but fortunately, Sunday’s timetable is on the short end of that estimate.
If Beal misses exactly six weeks, the first game he would play would be on November 25 at home against the Atlanta Hawks. This would take him out of the first 12 games of the season, including matchups between the Wizards and the Miami Heat, Toronto Raptors, Dallas Mavericks and Cleveland Cavaliers.
The six-week timetable is approximate — Beal could come back a little earlier or a little later, but it’s safe to expect him to miss most if not all of the month of November. Long-term, this isn’t a catastrophe for the Wizards (especially since Beal’s left wrist is his non-shooting wrist), but it’s a short-term setback for a team that hopes to make a run at one of the top seeds in the Eastern Conference. They could still do that, but it gets tougher now.