Coach Eddie Jordan, to his credit, is saying what a coach ought to say: that he'll call on his bench players to take up the slack. "Everybody in the league has had some devastating injuries. Miami with Wade," Jordan said. "We've got a capable bench . . . if we can collectively do things at a high level, we should win our share of games and move on to the playoffs. . . . With Antawn, Darius and Jarvis we should have a combination of perimeter play, post defense . . . and we have flexibility."

Arenas, before last night's game down in Charlotte, told The Post' s Ivan Carter, "It hurts but we can't use excuses anymore."

While that's exactly what you want to hear from your star player, truth is it's hard to see the Wizards, without Butler, doing anything more than getting to the playoffs. Late last season Butler missed five games and the Wizards lost all five. It's like a trip back to Kornheiser's Curse o' lez Boulez days. The irony of the defensively challenged Wizards' toughest skilled player fracturing his hand trying to make a defensive play is inescapable.

What the Wizards needed in order to take a postseason step forward was to have Arenas, Butler and Jamison at their best, then get supporting performances from Antonio Daniels, Blatche, Songaila and Hayes plus the bigs. That might have given the Wizards enough to get past the Bulls or Cavaliers in a first-round series.

But there's simply no way to replace Butler's 19 points, 7 rebounds, nearly 40 minutes per game and overall toughness on a team lacking in toughness to begin with. At least Butler can neutralize the other team's best forward. Without him last night, Charlotte's Gerald Wallace hammered the Wizards for 34 points and 14 rebounds. The Wizards get another dose of Wallace tonight at Verizon Center, then Drew Gooden and Anderson Varejao of the Cavaliers, then Richard Jefferson of the Nets for consecutive games, Miami's James Posey, then Chicago's Luol Deng. Turns out it was a mini-miracle to get Butler from the Lakers. Now it's going to take something just that dramatic to make any kind of noise in the playoffs without him.

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