Lou Williams suffered a fractured jaw on Tuesday and underwent surgery yesterday morning, having his upper and lower jaws wired together. He will be out 8 weeks, according to the team.

Williams was hit in the face by Antawn Jamison's shoulder in the first quarter of the Sixers' loss at Washington. Williams continued to play, going nearly 40 minutes and posting 26 points and five rebounds. Williams will meet soon with a nutritionist about a liquid diet designed to help him maintain his weight.

Sixers president/general manager Ed Stefanski was noncommital on whether he would look to add a guard to the roster.

"We are going to see," he told the Daily News' Phil Jasner. "We have versatility in the backcourt."

The Sixers' roster stands at 13, with Williams and Marreese Speights (knee) unavailable. The NBA limit is 15, with a maximum of 12 active for any game.

Before Wednesday night's game in Boston, coach Eddie Jordan had thrown out the same starting lineup in each of the team's first 14 games - Williams and Andre Iguodala at guards, Thaddeus Young and Elton Brand at forwards and Samuel Dalembert at center. Then came the two injuries in Tuesday's loss.

In the third quarter, Brand collided under the basket with Jamison and fell awkwardly to the floor. He waved to Jordan to get him out of the game, and it was revealed he had tweaked his right hamstring. He also sat out the game in Boston with a sore and tight hammy.

With key sub Speights already out until after the New Year with a partial tear of his left medial collateral ligament, the Sixers suddenly find themselves painfully thin.

"We are a team that has 13 superstars," Jordan said earlier this season.

We are about to find out.

Jaw breaker

 

With Lou Williams out for 8 weeks, rookie Jrue Holiday will see extended action.

Holiday, the NBA's youngest player at 19, started his first NBA game in Boston, and showed why Eddie Jordan thinks he will be a very good player in the league.

In a little more than 34 minutes of play, Holiday contributed 10 points and six assists in the 113-110 loss. He turned the ball over four times and shot 4-for-13, but didn't shy away from open looks and wasn't afraid to try to throw passes.

Though the UCLA product is going through the normal struggles of an NBA rookie, Holiday shows signs of having a mentality and toughness far beyond someone who has been a part of just 15 regular-season games.

In Tuesday's loss at Washington, he came off the bench to ignite a fourth-quarter comeback in which the Sixers almost erased a 15-point deficit. During his 9-minute, 40-second run in that quarter, Holiday dropped a career-high 11 points, drained three of five treys and grabbed six rebounds and two steals.

"Jrue came in and just filled up the stat sheet," Williams said.