Ronny Turiaf broke his hand.

It's going to take more than a lockout to prevent Ronny Turiaf from hurting himself. The Knicks' resident BFG (where the "F" stands for "friendly", "fuzzy", "French", and "fragile") has been playing (and shimmying) for France in international competition. That is, until a fight for a rebound in a game against Australia proved too much for his metacarpals to handle. From the MVP247 recap, via Alan Hahn (and previously linked by hvino and others):

Ronny Turiaf is set to miss EuroBasket with a broken hand after undergoing scans in London on Wednesday. The New York Knicks player picked up the injury during Monday’s win over Britain and FFB officials have confirmed to MVP that Turiaf will consider withdrawing from the squad if further tests in Paris show lasting damage.

"The hypothetical withdrawal of Ronny Turiaf, a player who is as important on the court as he is off it, could be a real blow to France," France head coach Vincent Collet said. "I can only imagine how disappointed and frustrated Ronny would be to miss the EuroBasket.

EuroBasket is, of course, the Pan-European basketball tournament that begins at the end of this month (it'd also aptly describe a wicker receptacle in which one might store EU currency). A few pieces of good news for our purposes, considering that this is bad news for the French: 1. It was his left hand. 2. He'll have plenty of time to heal before the Knicks need him, lockout or not. 3. Sitting out the rest of the international schedule reduces risk of further injury significantly, although if anybody can pull a hammy in street clothes, it's Turiaf.

Anyway, this is a major bummer for Ronny and for his countryhommes, and for them we are quite sorry. As Knicks fans, though, this doesn't appear to be much to worry about, at least for now. Hopefully he doesn't need surgery or anything.

<3 U, Ronny.