This is how it plays when you're payin' for your snakebit ways.

The Warriors caught a, uh, bad break Wednesday when they learned that first round draft choice Patrick O'Bryant will likely miss the start of training camp on October 3. O'Bryant has a broken sesmoid bone in his right foot, an injury he sustained last week during an off-season scrimmage in Vegas. He's out four to six weeks, but fortunately, no surgery.

And you know what? It doesn't really seem like that big of a deal.

Expectations were already pretty low for O'Bryant this year -- probably a residual hangover from previous big men busts like Joe Barry Carroll, Joe Smith, Adonal Foyle, . . . -- and the rehiring of Mr. Small Ball last week dropped his stock even further. Ultimately, a broken sesmoid is barely a ripple in the Warriors Sea of Troubles.

Larger forces might be at work though. For the second year in row, the Warriors first round draft pick has broken a bone before playing a single minute of game time. Last year, Ike Diogu broke his left hand during training camp. Then there's LeBaron's twingy hammy, the inability of Pietrus to play more than three months of a season -- even JRich has succumbed to normal wear and tear. Chris Taft hardly played at all last year, supposedly because of a bad back.

Couple the injuries with key drafting mistakes, coaching misfires, and ownership's split priorities, throw in a couple of karma burns like The Webber Curse and the Courtside Strangler, round up a desperate fan base that seems to thrive on disappointment, and you've got all the ingredients for a snakebit franchise. This isn't Serpent and the Rainbow stuff we're dreaming up here, we have empirical evidence -- 12 straight years without even coming close to the playoffs.

What can you do? You really can't go after anybody for bad luck. But O'Bryant's injury, and Diogu's before that are just some of the things that seem to happen repeatedly to franchises that have their heads up their asses. For Warriors fans, O'Bryant's injury is yet another sign from the gods that management needs to get its act together before the team can expect any help from luck or fate.