Is Ike Diogu in game shape?

I didn’t see Ike’s picture, but saw him plenty during his AZ days. He’s always been a bigger guy, in the mold of Paul Millsap at Utah, for instance, or even our old favorite Zach Randolph. He’s a bit short for the PF spot, but has the wide body that lets him get his shot off and grab rebounds.

You raise an interesting question.

The team said that Diogu has a “tweaked” knee. Never heard of this medical condition before, but I’m pretty ignorant about medicine, and so surely there must be such a thing. Since the Quick podcast today (I think) said that the team views Diogu as our 11th man next season, and since this is what the team said, this is the easiest theory to buy.

A second theory, looking at the roster, is that the team is preparing Diogu for the injured or inactive list. This came to mind because the team can only carry 12 players on the active list, and they are over the limit. This theory does not seem plausible to me, because Diogu has a player option at the end of next season, and being on the injured or inactive list next season minimizes his value, because he would surely bolt after such treatment.

A final theory is that Mr. Pritchard is not yet done reshaping the roster for next year, and keeping Diogu off of the summer roster is a way to protect an asset he might want to trade. Mr. Pritchard has not yet satisfied Coach McMillan’s request for more veteran help, and he has dealt Coach with roster headache with 13 or 14 or 15 players—and more high caliber players than last season; we can expect less harmony and sunshine about minutes. And it is difficult to believe Mr. Pritchard will forego his long-apparent devotion to flexibility, by going into the season with every single roster slot filled. I can’t help wondering if having Outlaw and Webster here for a day or two with the Summer League team isn’t a mid-term checkup, to see which has progressed more with his homework assignment, so Mr. Pritchard can surmise which is the better candidate to move. Let’s see; the team has 3 centers (with LeFrentz, if anyone, most likely to move), 3 power forwards (with the trade choice probably between Diogu and Frye, according to this conspiracy theory), 3 small forwards (looks like it’s a choice between Outlaw and Webster) and 3 point guards (with Sergio or Blake as the most likely candidates for a trade) under contract now, and with a fourth (Kopenan) getting serious consideration.

I don’t know. It is completely plausible that there will be no more roster changes before the trading deadline next season, and that a tweak is just a tweak. Occam’s Razor says the tweak theory is the most likely. All of us fans are justly enamored with our shiny new roster anyway, and want it to stay the way it is, so we can fantasize about World Domination a bit longer before we have to deal with the reality of building chemistry all over again and getting some experience for all of those rookies. But I wouldn’t be completely surprised with another, ahem, roster adjustment between now and the first week or so after Summer League.