The 76ers got the win last night, but their star forward suffered a dislocated shoulder that is going to keep him out a month.

Team officials say the Sixers’ leading scorer has a fracture and tear in his right shoulder but will not need surgery.

Brand is averaging 15.9 points and 9.8 rebounds per game this season.

A playoff team last season, the 76ers struggled to a 9-14 start before firing coach Maurice Cheeks last week. They are 2-0 under interim coach Tony DiLeo.

All right, so the team is currently 11-14. Let’s assume that Brand misses exactly a month and returns Jan. 18. That means he would miss 15 games. The Sixers’ winning percentage was .440 with him, so let’s say they win 34% of their games without him (5-10). That would put them at 16-24 when he gets back. Is there still time to get back into the playoff hunt?

Sure. Considering .500 will probably earn a playoff spot in the East, it shouldn’t be too difficult. But assuming our assumptions are correct, that would mean that the Sixers would have to go 25-17 (.595) over the last half of the season to make the playoffs. And this team hasn’t proved that they can play at that level thus far.

Every win they can get with Brand out will make things easier. It would be a major disappointment if this team misses the playoffs, especially in the East.

It’s time for Andre Iguodala to step up and earn that big contract he signed this offseason.

Manu Ginobili is planning to have arthroscopic surgery on his left heel.

“They’re going to operate on me,” he told Argentina’s La Nacion newspaper Friday. The 31-year-old doesn’t know when he’ll have the surgery or who will do it.

Ginobili, who helped lead Argentina to a bronze medal in the Beijing Olympics, said an MRI exam of the injury showed no improvement.

“It’s the same as it was two months ago, when they did the first exam,” he said. “Now, the thing is, it’s not better either, and it seems like the only way to repair it completely is arthroscopic surgery.”

I had arthroscopic surgery on both of my knees while in college, and recovery from those procedures took about a month. But this is Ginobili’s heel, so it might be a different story. He has two months until the season starts, so there is time to recover.

On the heels of signing a monster contract, Warriors’ guard Monta Ellis will miss the next 3-4 months after undergoing surgery to repair a torn deltoid ligament in his left ankle.

In an afternoon conference call with local reporters, Warriors executive vice president of basketball operations Chris Mullin said that Ellis informed the club that he injured himself last Thursday playing pick-up ball in his native Mississippi.

It was about a month ago that Ellis received a six-year, $66 million contract extension from the Warriors. Ellis’ ankle will now be immobilized for six weeks, followed by at least six weeks of off-court rehab before the 6-foot-3 guard can return to basketball workouts, ruling Ellis out for all of training camp and the preseason and at least the first month of the regular season.

This is clearly a major blow to the Golden State franchise, which isn’t having the best of offseasons. Ellis is moving from off guard to point guard, and needed training camp and the first part of the season to become acclimated with his new role. Even if he’s ready to go by January, it’s not like they just plug him in and expect everything to work. Given how difficult it is to make the playoffs in the Western Conference, I just don’t see how Golden State stays in the hunt, but stranger things have happened.

The newly-acquired Marcus Williams will have a shot to run things in Ellis’ absence. He’s been something of a disappointment thus far in his career, but he now has a second life in the Bay Area.