SF Gate Laie, Hawaii -- In celebration of their final hours of training camp, several Warriors took a starlit plunge into their hotel pool Sunday night. Mickael Pietrus and Monta Ellis staged an impromptu swimming race. Baron Davis floated around the deep end, where Zarko Cabarkapa did a few laps. Even Mamadou N'diaye, who says he doesn't know how to swim, was coaxed into the waters. The whole time, Ike Diogu watched from a nearby lounge chair. With his broken left hand elevated and wrapped in a soft cast, the power forward only could sit and stare while his teammates splashed around. He'll have to get used to that feeling as Golden State readies for its first exhibition game against the Lakers tonight. "Here we are about to play, and I'm not going to be able to play, so I'm a little bit disappointed," Diogu said after the Warriors wrapped camp Monday. "All the training -- I don't want to say it was for nothing -- but I was really excited to play in a game. It's a little bit frustrating now." Diogu fractured his fourth metacarpal bone while going up for a basket in 3-on-3 drills Sunday afternoon. He knew it was more than a jammed finger when his left hand was still throbbing on the bus ride back to the hotel. The Warriors will wait until after Diogu is re-examined in Oakland to set a timetable for his return, but Diogu hoped it would be only a few weeks. That's still more time than he's ever been out -- Diogu said this was his first basketball injury -- and more than the Warriors would like him to miss. Diogu looked shaky at the start of camp, showing few signs of his inside grit as he struggled to remember plays and positioning. He admitted feeling lost on the court Monday, saying he was "messing up on the plays" and letting it affect the rest of his game. At Arizona State, Diogu was able to charge from one end of the court to the other, establish his position in the post, and back down his defenders. There was little motion, little precision and few consequences for blowing a screen. "Now if you mess up, you mess the whole play up," Diogu said. Diogu's injury isn't a deal-breaker for the Warriors, who envision his power game as a complement to their perimeter-favoring big men. But the bad break does bring the threat of injury closer to home. Consider Friday's practice, which featured one of training camp's scarier sequences. On the last play of the afternoon, Derek Fisher landed on Adonal Foyle after chasing a loose ball. Fisher turned his left ankle and stayed down for several minutes before hobbling off the court and receiving treatment. Moments later, Baron Davis slipped on a slick spot as he ran his first set of lines. Davis winced in pain and pulled up before slowly jogging away the discomfort. In that five-minute span, the Warriors nearly lost their top player and his chief insurance policy. "Any time your main guys go down or get banged up, you go 'Ahh,' " general manager Rod Higgins said while drawing in a sharp breath. "That's part of the business. You just pray it doesn't happen." Source
This squad appears to have decent depth-maybe very good depth. A few early,short term injuries can result in another guy getting extra minutes and more development,but obviously,if there is a major injury in the second half it would mess up things. Our competition also will have some injuries,and if ours are not excessive we can get through it. Baron is the one guy we'd really have trouble replacing over a period of a few weeks.
