Gilbert Arenas ducked the media for the second straight day, refusing to come out after practice and speak on the last 48 hours. He did practice with the team, although it was basically a shootaround. With so many guys banged up, it's hard to practice. So the team, under the supervision of associate head coach Mike O'Koren -- who filled in for Eddie Jordan, who is out with a sinus infection -- and assistant coach Randy Ayers, the Wizards did some work on defensive assignments and then shot around.

It's still unclear as to when or how Eddie found out Gilbert was playing last night. O'Koren said he didn't know until Gilbert ran out onto the court to join his team on the bench in uniform with 5:30 left in the first quarter.

I asked DeShawn Stevenson how easy or difficult it has been to focus with the whole "Is he gonna play, is he cleared?" talk, and if Gilbert's grand entrance took anything away from the team last night and this was his response:

"Nah, I think everybody expects that from him. When you have a guy that you expect things from, you just look over it. Some teams it probably would be a distraction, but we know Gil a lot and we just look over it. He can do whatever he do, but when he comes on the court, he's ready to play so I think that's why nobody really pays attention to it."

Stevenson was still hobbled by that right ankle sprain that forced him to miss the waining minutes of last night's loss to the Bucks. He said it still hurts pretty badly, but he hopes to play tomorrow against the Heat.

D-Steve probably will play. The man hasn't missed a start in 242 games and even played half a season with a torn meniscus his last year in Orlando before signing with Washington.

Antawn Jamison had his shoulder in a sling and was in street clothes. The team will evaluate his sprained right shoulder later today and right now his status for tomorrow is unknown.

And finally: I grabbed Etan Thomas on his way out and he said he had a CT scan done last week and he's still not fully recovered from that surgery to repair an leaky aortic valve this past October. As he's said before, the heart isn't the problem. That's fine. But his sternum is what's taking a while to heal. Eight weeks ago the sternum was only 50 percent healed. Now the bottom of the sternum is completely healed, but the top portion -- the manubrium -- remains only 50 percent healed.

Thomas said the CT scans aren't done close together because the condition of the bone doesn't change much, but he didn't want to totally rule this season out.

"I'm just out here supporting the team. I'm just happy to be around the guys," Thomas said. "It's just one of those things where I have to be patient, and you can't really do anything about it, the body's just got to have time to heal. I thought I was going to be back sooner, when I first came back, because I was feeling good. But they told me, 'It's not healed and you really don't want to take any big hits there until it gets healed. So, you've just got to listen to the doctors and be thankful for everything that has happened."

-- Mike Jones