Erik Spoelstra said Justise Winslow's sore left wrist could be splinted the rest of the season when the Miami Heat forward is away from the court, with the hope that surgery can be avoided.
"He probably will be in one for a large part of the season, whenever he's not on the court, and that's just to stabilize it," Spoelstra said, with Winslow missing his 16th consecutive game Monday night with what the team continues to term a sore left wrist. "Anybody that's hard wrist issues, you have to wear a brace when you're not active, and it helps. Any little bit helps. But that's more precautionary. He doesn't necessarily need it."
Winslow went through the morning shootaround in advance of Monday night's game against the Washington Wizards, but has yet to resume contact work.
Spoelstra said a goal is to avoid a surgical solution.
"I think right now all of our hopes are that he won't need it," Spoelstra said, "and that's why we went through extensive treatment and rest. And right now it looks like we won't need to go that route."
Winslow has remained behind for the Heat's past two trips, working extensively with the Heat training staff at AmericanAirlines Arena.
"It actually has gotten significantly better," Spoelstra said. "It was a sprain. He continued to play with it, continued to re-aggravate it. And then we shut him down, we started the process of healing it and then rehabbing it and then re-strengthening it. And he's getting better. He's doing more court work each day.
"I would say probably now is when you're starting to see, OK, he's probably getting pretty close to full-contract work on the court. But last week was an important week. He put in a heavy workload, a lot of conditioning, a lot of rehab, a lot of treatment. And he was able to step up a little bit more to do more court work."
Winslow spent Sunday with teammates at the Miami Dolphins' game at Hard Rock Stadium and at a promotional appearance wearing a splinted-brace on his left, shooting hand.
The second-year forward has not played since shooting 3 of 11 in a Nov. 14 loss to the San Antonio Spurs at the AT&T Center, an outing that dropped him to .336 shooting from the field this season, including 6 of 27 on 3-pointers.
