With an extremely important Washington Wizards season coming our way (hopefully, the last of the Pre-Kevin Durant Era), we’re all starting to form our predictions about what’s going to happen.

As fans, we only want to acknowledge the good ones. For instance, Ben thinks that John Wall is going to lead the league in assists, and that Otto Porter will be in the Most Improved Player running – both of which are perfectly reasonable.

This is a good team, and there are plenty of good portensions to be had. But allow me to throw up a negative one: I think the Wizards’ frontcourt is going to be the biggest weakness of the team, and I fear that it will be the reason that they don’t reach their goals this season.

We’ve seen a commitment from the Washington Wizards, in both word and deed, to small-ball.

It’s why the Wizards went out and got players like Jared Dudley, Gary Neal, Kelly Oubre and Alan Anderson.

But the Wizards’ quest for a real, workable stretch 4 is still unfulfilled.

Jared Dudley is a solid player, sure, but he’s out for at least the first month of the season with a herniated disk – and that’s the type of injury that many never fully recover from.

I feel like we aren’t making enough of a deal out of this.

Remember Emeka Okafor? He was only supposed to be out for a month or two, and more than two years later he still hasn’t returned to the court.

And guess what: without Dudley, we’re right back to where we were last year, only without Kevin Seraphin. Drew Gooden, again, is the only healthy stretch 4 on the roster. I’ve said in the past that Otto Porter could be that player one day, but he isn’t ready yet.

Am I making you a little nervous yet? Because all this means that Nene, the widely-reviled goat of the Wizards’ second round loss to the Atlanta Hawks, is once again going to be starting and playing big minutes.

Personally, I don’t think this an enormous problem on its own – when healthy and engaged, Nene is capable of completely dominating a basketball game in every facet. But he doesn’t fit into the Washington Wizards’ small-ball ethos, and it’s a rare event that he’s actually healthy and locked in.

Nene has always worked well with Marcin Gortat, but the partnership isn’t as favorable to the Polish Hammer than one with someone like Dudley, Paul Pierce or Gooden at the stretch 4.

And with Dudley’s health already an issue, if Nene goes down it could quickly become a disaster. Kris Humphries is a solid player, but we saw in the playoffs just how much Randy Wittman really trusts him: I don’t think Hump played a single meaningful minute.

Furthermore, with Kevin Seraphin departed to New York, the Wizards lack a viable backup center.

Who’s going to come in for Gortat? Are they going to shift Nene to the 5? We already know that Nene is adamant about his dislike for playing center. Humphries can’t do it. DeJuan Blair? Still on the team. Still terrible.

There are a lot of questions there, and the Wizards really didn’t do anything to answer them. The Wizards are, quite simply, short on big men that can play – small ball is the wave of the future, but they’re not the Golden State Warriors. They don’t have a Draymond Green that could make it viable to go without any traditional big men.

And if Dudley comes back and isn’t himself, or worse, doesn’t come back at all? The Wizards are going to be in deep, deep trouble. Fingers crossed.