The 2013 NBA Global Games ended with a bang a few days ago, with Shanghai gushing with pride and the NBA’s highest-ranking executives reciprocating the appreciation of the efforts and interest in pulling off such an historic moment for both sides.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned from the four Asian destinations of these preseason games, it’s that when a city such as Manila, Taipei, Beijing, or Shanghai experiences a peak of success, and wishes to have that marquee moment repeated in the near future, and knows that it can realistically be accomplished again, there’s no shortage of praise and appreciation.
Yet as we watch the negotiations of the possible contract extension for Andrew Bogut unfold, I, perhaps drowning in the sea of thank yous witnessed by the pregame press conferences with David Stern at the four Asian destinations of the Global Games, can’t help but wonder if Bogut isn’t feeling a tad bit under-appreciated.
I’ve now noticed hints of that on at least three occasions. Even way back on Media Day 9/27/2013, Bogut began stating (in response to questions from Marcus Thompson) that his elbow and ankle injuries were the result of freak accidents:
The two biggest injuries in my career were injuries I can’t control and that’s the frustrating thing relaying to people. I can’t control getting undercut by Kyle Lowry, trying to block his floater and falling down on his foot right at the right perfect angle to break my talus. People will say I was injury-prone, maybe it is, but I can’t control that. The flipside of it is, (if) I don’t try to block that shot someone’s gonna put it on YouTube and say, ‘He’s a pussy, he’s not trying to block shots.’ So it’s a lose-lose situation.
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The elbow thing was the same. That’s not something that, you know, ‘Bogut wasn’t lifting weights in the summer, he came in overweight, he fell off the rim and broke his elbow.’ Those are two injuries I can’t control. So I think if I’m healthy, I definitely feel like I’m a Top 3, Top 4 center in the NBA.
He reiterated this in an interview with Tim Kawakami on 10/1/2013.
“Take those two split-seconds away, I’ve only really ever had one injury, which is a little back stress fracture,” he told TK.
In that interview, Bogut added that he played last season at “40 or 50% capacity” and hinted at the sacrifice he endured.
“In reality it was probably a twelve-month injury. I came back in six months — less than six months,” Bogut said.
Then last week, the day after Scott Howard-Cooper broke the story that Bogut had begun contract extension talks with the Warriors, at Media Availability in Shanghai he recanted the process:
I break my elbow, and I can’t extend my arm for four months, there’s all these question marks, whether it’s going to be the same again, and then I break my ankle. I couldn’t run, change direction for the whole of last season so I try to push through it, didn’t play so well at times but there were definitely question marks sometimes.
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You know, it’s tough. The light at the end of the tunnel, sometimes you don’t see it for three, four, five, six, seven months. You gotta just try to keep pushing through it.
Bogut also has repeatedly suggested that his defense was more of a factor in the playoffs than the three-point-gunning style the Warriors are famous for.
“I’m a firm believer the be-all and end-all is our defense. We’re going to score. We’re a great scoring team,” he told Kawakami, “But last season in the playoffs, we realized when we play defense, even 90% of the time during the game, maybe we can have a little lapse here or there, we’re going to win ballgames.”
Last week in Shanghai, he once again hinted at the oncourt sacrifice that he’s made for the team.
“On this team my role’s a little different than what it was in Milwaukee: defensive presence in the paint, get some paint points, defending paint points, defending probably their best big man, night in night out, being a focal point of that defense. Offensively, just trying to get guys like Steph and Klay open, setting good screens, and getting the scraps after that, so it might be a quick dunk or an easy tip-in, but offensively we have two or three guys that get most of the touches.”
“There’s no forgiveness in this league,” Bogut said in Shanghai, “People don’t take that into account, so I’ve got to bring it every night, no one’s gonna feel sorry for me or take it easy on me.”
He said back on Media Day that the contract extension (or free agency) “will take care of itself with time.
“I’ve never been a guy that would go into a front office, slam my fist on the table, and say, ‘I want this, I want that’, or vice-versa, I mean, I respect the organization and what they’re doing, I believe they respect me and how I’ve handled the injury and everything.”
I, for one, can’t really fault Warriors owner Joe Lacob for his concerns about the external forces that affect the franchise and basically looking outward from the organization, in his pursuit of Dwight Howard. In fact, as part of a Bay Area community that has endured decades of — as even Bogut acknowledged on Media Day — being the laughingstock of the NBA, I lauded the efforts to try and attract Dwight.
No one ever said diplomacy was easy (and for the record, I think Howard-Cooper’s use of the words “looking for payback” to describe Bogut’s impending negotiations went a hair too far), but the external pursuit of Dwight may have cost the franchise a few million precious dollars in these internal contract extension negotiations with Bogut — granted, Lacob has gone on record to say that he likes Bogut a lot and hopes Bogut is a Warrior for a long time.
As Howard-Cooper reported, the initial numbers last week “weren’t insulting” but also “weren’t what (Bogut) was looking for” (which is why I think the final number might end up being greater than TK’s prediction of $12 million).
Bogut is a team player who makes sacrifices to fit in the role the franchise wants him to play and he gets that the NBA is a business. As he said on Media Day, “I’m not gonna really try to go out there and average 20-and-20 and try and get paid, that’s just not my nature.”
Bogut’s obviously not a penny-pincher and I’d be remiss to say that the Warriors have done anything wrong in the front office. And so that I cover all bases, I might even go so far as to say the media has just been doing its job and fans are fans; they’re supposed to be mad when players don’t play well. Add to that the fact that Bogut did get paid $13 million last year for being 40-50%.
But it’s become apparent to me that Bogut’s just one of those old-school-type, down-to-earth guys where I think a “thank you” would have gone a long way instead of the standard business routine.
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