The Santa Cruz Warriors’ front office is abuzz with hopes that they might land the extra-supersized Mamadou N’Diaye, a Senegal native who spent three years at UC Irvine.
Should N’Diaye, who’s listed at 7-foot-6-inches, make it in the NBA, he would be one of the six tallest players ever to play. He’s playing on the Golden State Warriors’ NBA Summer League team right now, which could give our Santa Cruz team an opportunity to sign him. N’Diaye didn’t see much playing time in his first game in the summer tournament in Las Vegas, but head coach Jarron Collins did put him in late in the contest to wave his arms around and try to disrupt an inbound pass—always a sound defensive strategy when you have a guy with a wingspan of more than 8 feet.
Meanwhile at City Hall, Santa Cruz’s economic development team is finishing a study on where to build a permanent 3,000-4,000-seat arena for sports. One idea is to cram it into the current temporary site’s footprint, which is small and not ideal. Their second-best plan has been putting an arena at Depot Park, a crown jewel for community sports—one that the city spent more than $1 million in repairs to reopen last year.
.Santa Cruz Warriors Look Ahead
