Francisco García suffered a minor finger injury in the Dominican Republic’s loss to Puerto Rico on Wednesday.

The 6-7 shooting guard sat out the Dominican Republic’s next game, a 86-73 win over Mexico.

“Francisco has a cut in one of his fingers. He basically has a nail out of place,” said head coach Julio Toro said. “I was told (Thursday) that he wouldn’t be available and I haven’t been told if he will be available (Friday).”

Now the Sacramento Kings, Garcia’s NBA club, has reportedly forbidden Francisco to continue playing in the FIBA Americas tournament in fear that further participation could aggravate the injury.

A statement from the Sacramento Kings: Kings swingman Francisco Garcia fractured his right ring finger while playing for the Dominican Republic in the 2009 FIBA Americas Championship. He will not play in the remainder of the tournament and will return to Sacramento late next week, at which time the injury will be further evaluated.

NBA teams cannot forbid their players to play in international tournaments, as long as the the international teams pay the required insurance. However, if the player has an injury or is recovering, the NBA team has the right to end their participation.

Thus far, this clause has been invoked a couple times already on NBA players in the FIBA American Championship – once for Jose Juan Barea of Puerto Rico and Eduardo Najera of Mexico.

With a crucial game against Canada, Garcia’s loss is a blow to the Dominican Republic’s chance of moving on.  Garcia is the team’s second leading scorer at 15.8 points per game.

Now the team will have to rely the team’s other scorers, Charlie Villanueva (17.1), Luis Flores (14.4), and Al Horford (14).  Toro will replace the injured Garcia with veteran Franklin Western in the starting lineup.

Garcia was already expected to miss the Kings’ voluntary conditioning program, which begins on September 8th.

Udrih Out Too: This is the second Sacramento King to be pulled from a tournament because of injury. Slovenia’s Beno Udrih injured himself and will miss three weeks, and all of the Eurobasket tournament.