Andrew Bogut doesn’t give a f—k
Bogut embraces being who he is, even if it's at the expense of popular opinion.
IN AN ERA of personal brands and cultivating squeaky clean personas, managing an athlete's identity is akin to the public relations of a corporate entity.
Not that Andrew Bogut gives a stuff.
“Nope.” he tells us.
Bogut embraces being who he is, even if it's at the expense of popular opinion.
Dissenters? Don’t care.
The straight-shooting Aussie big is honest to a fault. To wit, he polarises the Twitter masses with cryptic “shit-stirring” – as he calls it– in 140 characters or less.
“If you don’t like it, you can unfollow me,” he suggests.
Exhibit A: Social media
Mere weeks before the Boomers embarked on what would turn out to be an epic Olympic run, Andrew Bogut just could not help himself. Upon hearing that Liz Cambage, an Opals star, attended a Black Lives Matter rally in Melbourne, he quickly rebuked her, essentially de-legitimising her stance on the matter.
@litenmoloney @andrewbogut Drew here being an ignorant goose. pic.twitter.com/TAScIutLA1
— BRIGGS AKA BIG SIGH (@BriggsGE) July 25, 2016
Cambage returned fire.
As they say: boy, that escalated quickly.
Never mind that Bogut later retracted his earlier stance, having investigated the matter further and apologised. Never mind that it is obviously a storm in a teacup; the damage had been done. The court of public opinion had made a determination: here is another example of the Aussie mouthing off.
The perceived transgressions on social media paint Bogut a certain way. To many, he’s an opinionated prick who won’t shut up. To others, he’s the refreshing athlete who speaks his mind, refusing to kowtow to prescribed norms and institutionalised speak.
“I am myself,” says Bogut.
That comes at a cost: Unwanted reputations quickly develop. Oh, he’s bitter. He’s made of glass. Get on the court before you start mouthing off. The trolls gotta troll, right?
These moments threaten his legacy; each brushstroke adds to the broader picture. Bogut ceases to be the quintessential marketable NBA athlete. Instead, he’s the nebulous figure that problematises the notion, and therein lies his celebrity.
Perhaps his surly reputation gathers unwanted resentment from the masses. Does the speed of social media, its reach, and the insurgency of the medium affect the way we view him?
“He’s very happy to speak his mind and engage in conversations where he knows he might not be right,” says Chris Anstey, one of the trail blazers for Aussie big men in the NBA, and a savvy social media user himself. “That’s a good thing.”
Consider this: when he was with the Golden State Warriors, Bogut was portrayed a certain way. He was the ying to the Splash Brothers’ yang; a thug who was sent in to do the dirty work, smashing into enemies to free up the likes of Steph Curry and Klay Thompson.
It’s unheralded grunt work –- brutish, even -– that only served to drive certain perceptions of him.
In between slanted narratives from media, other factors threatened to portray Bogut in a negative light. He was traded to the Dallas Mavericks, as salary dump, that helped the Warriors in their quest to sign Kevin Durant. It felt as though he was jettisoned at the first opportunity like unwanted fat. The Mavericks subsequently offloaded the Aussie prior to this season’s trade deadline like flotsam. Twitter battles simply add fuel to the fire.
“It could,” says Brian Goorjian, who guided Bogut in the Australian national team across two Olympic campaigns. Goorjian acknowledges that reputations and media narratives may affect how people ultimately grade the legacy of Andrew Bogut. “They could form an image through that that isn’t really a true understanding of who he is.”
Exhibit B: The war against media
In 2016, Bogut engaged in a crusade against fake media; in this case, half-baked stories. The LA Times conducted an anonymous survey in which rival players, league executives and coaches determined the dirtiest players in the NBA. Bogut was named as one of them.
Who are these people? Why are they hiding behind an anonymous survey? How is this even a story?
Bogut railed against the agenda-setting of modern media outlets, and the need to satiate a public that gravitates towards quick consumption and hasty judgement.
“A sensational headline gets clicks, and the job is done,” says Bogut, when it comes to the lost art form of genuine journalism, and the effort it takes to unpack a story with real investigation.
Whilst the Web 2.0 era led to an explosion of basketball content and a level of access that has benefited the athlete, it has also become a two-edged sword.
“People remember you, oftentimes because they hear from you... and hear about you because there are stories,” says Anstey.
Sometimes, those stories are skewed, slanting Bogut's legacy.
Does Andrew Bogut give a f—k?
“I think all that stuff’s always up for debate and up for opinion,” says Bogut.
He thought about it when he was younger, as the face of the franchise for an upstart Milwaukee Bucks squad built around their number one draft pick.
Nowadays, as he acknowledges his changing role, he’s no longer asked to put up 20 and 10. He cites his career accomplishments to date, including winning a championship with the Golden State Warriors. He’s a role player, but he’s winning. But he still has his doubters, and always will.
Ostensibly written off as an NBA force, an overarching stigma persists, threatening to define him.
Are we underselling the greatness of Andrew Bogut?
BUT HE WAS so good.
Brian Goorjian, the legendary NBL coach who oversaw the Australian national team for eight years, couldn’t believe it.
“Who?” he asked curiously, when an assistant coach showed him the list of camp participants.
The former Boomers mentor routinely ran mini-camps for some of the brightest junior prospects in the nation, eager to identify and fast-track the next up-and-comer into the national pipeline. On this occasion, the camp was held in Sandringham, where the senior national team also happened to be training.
As Goorjian scanned the list of attendees, he noticed a 17 year old named Andrew Bogut, who hailed from Sandringham. He was almost seven feet tall. He was huge, an entirely different beast from the armada of 6’6’’-6’7” players the country was systematically producing.
Goorjian reasoned that he couldn’t be any good if he had never heard of him before, and he told the camp leader as much. In fact, Goorjian didn’t even bother attending the first day of the junior session, instead focusing on the senior team and sending his assistant coach instead.
At the end of the day, the assistant came back with surprising news. He raved over this Bogut kid, clamouring how he was by far the best out there -- a rare talent.
“So I came the next day, looked, and I go, ‘Oh, my God!’” says Goorjian.
Goorjian witnessed a giant teenager with an aura about him. He possessed a physical presence fused with skill, athleticism, and tremendous toughness. To Goorjian, Bogut was head and shoulders among anyone else he had ever seen, for someone so young.
From that day onwards, Andrew Bogut was firmly on his radar.
The impression only grew 18 months later, when Bogut singlehandedly led the national junior squad to victory against a home-based senior Boomers team, in a closed door scrimmage at Alexandria, Sydney. That early 2003 practice session included the likes of Matthew Nielsen, Jason Smith, Glenn Saville, Brad Newley, Matt Knight, Damian Martin and other future legends of Australian basketball.
Despite the level of talent on show, Bogut shone; he was an absolute beast. Goorjian was astounded when Bogut recording something along the lines of 40 points and 15 rebounds in that game. “I thought, ‘My God!’”
According to Goorjian, the junior team wound up beating the senior squad –- memories are hazy at this point, with conflicting recollections from several other sources –- but the real story that day was Andrew Bogut.
Overlooked by the system throughout his junior development, Bogut took out his frustrations with a dominant display in front of the national team coach. The totality of his game was breathtaking; back-to-the-basket moves, face-up jumpers, and more than anything else - Bogut was a rebounding force. Bogut combined sheer size with lithe movement and an innate feel for the game.
“He left an impression. We could not stop him in the low post,” says Goorjian. “[He] came in with a chip, like, ‘I’m going to kick your arse.””
Goorjian was not happy to see that his senior team lost, particularly after a hard week of training, but his disappointment was dampened by the prospect of what Bogut might become.
“Here’s this kid, that nobody really knows, and they’re going, ‘wow, he’s talented and he’s a nasty, tough, son of a bitch,’” laughs Goorjian.
The junior team would ultimately win the World Junior Championships later that year. Bogut won tournament MVP, etching his name into the world stage.
TO BEGIN TO understand Andrew Bogut, you have to appreciate the complex character underneath. What makes Bogut so deeply fascinating is this inherent contradiction: He supposedly doesn't care, yet his entire success has been driven by care. Bogut has been debunking misconceptions and proving people wrong his entire life.
Growing up in the rough end of town, he made it to the big time. Check.
School yard fights? No dramas, I'll take on all comers.
He was overlooked for junior representative teams and state teams, and that chip on his only shoulder grew. Not good enough? I'll destroy them.
The challenges kept mounting and his protective outer shell only hardened. That invulnerable exterior still serves him to this very day.
Although he is often characterised as being curt and straightforward, you sense it's just a front. Bogut deeply cares.
* * *
HE'S A ONCE-in-a-lifetime player.
That was the assertion from Ray Giacoletti, the long-time college coach who encouraged Bogut to be more. Giacolletti has coached in Division I basketball for over 35 years, including head coaching stints at North Dakota State, Eastern Washington and Drake.
In Bogut, Giacoletti saw a player who was talented, skilled and clearly knew how to be a winner. The Aussie had just concluded a highly impressive freshman year with the Runnin’ Utes, but he was only just getting started.
“[Bogut] had a chip on his shoulder; he wanted to go prove to people how good he was and could be,” recalls Giacoletti.
Giacoletti made it his mission to get to know Bogut as a person –- think Timmy and Pop -– immediately upon his arrival as basketball head coach at the University of Utah. He travelled to Melbourne with the Aussie to meet his parents. He took time out to learn what made Bogut tick, and imparted his advice on whether Bogut should declare for the draft, or come back for his sophomore season.
In the end, Bogut returned for another year at Utah, convinced that another campaign would strengthen his draft stock. Giacoletti spent that year teaching his finest ever pupil.
In one of those lessons, Bogut needed to understand that leading the nation in blocked shots and rebounding wasn’t enough. To truly become great he needed to become a more rounded defensive player.
What good are blocks, if the balls bounce right back to the opposition?
Charges on the other hand? They result from reading the play and doing the team-first thing. It came from executing correct rotations and sacrificing your body for the team. Best of all? You got the ball back.
Bogut butted heads with Giacoletti initially, but began to see results. The Aussie was never one to walk away from a challenge; he ended up competing with Marc Jackson -– the team’s tenacious point guard -– in leading the team for charges taken for the season.
“Once Andrew trusted you, or a situation, you were going to get his absolute best,” Giacoletti promised.
Utah charged into the national conversation with a Sweet 16 appearance, with Bogut developing into the complete package. He swept all of the major individual college awards, and became one of the greatest to ever grace the court for the Running Utes. Yet doubt persisted from the outside. There was growing chatter over the legitimacy of his claim as the top overall pick in the NBA draft.
Bogut spent the lead-in to draft night fending off scrutiny and justifying why he was the guy.
But was he really deserving of the top overall pick in the NBA draft? Was he the next Luc Longley?
* * *
TWO YEARS PASSED.
The euphoria of being Australia's first ever number one overall pick had long dissipated.
Reputations were usually built in a player's first two years in the league, and Bogut's early returns were mixed. Bogut’s rookie season averages in Milwaukee were 9.4 points and 7 rebounds, and those numbers hardly set the world on fire. But over time, he learnt how the league worked, and improvement beckoned.
By the 2009/10 campaign -- his fifth season in the league -- Bogut began to live up to the billing, and the pressure, of being the number one overall pick. It was his best individual and team season to date.
He was unleashed as a post weapon, alternating between sweet lefty hooks and an effective face-up game. The Bucks ran everything through him, allowing Bogut’s natural playmaking ability to shine. Most importantly, the increased scoring load did not dull his nasty edge.
Bogut became the guy.
He did all the little things –- the winning plays, teammates called it -– that said more about his character than any anonymous poll ever would. He would foul an enemy hard for you in retribution; he set hard picks to spring you open for a jumper.
“He did everything – the little things that teammates need,” says Luke Ridnour, who played with Bogut for two seasons at Milwaukee. “[He was one of the] guys that you enjoyed playing with, because he had your back.”
Bogut blossomed into a two-way center, anchoring an elite defense tied for second in the league in defensive efficiency. He led an upstart Bucks team to a 46-36 record and the sixth seed in the Eastern Conference.
People forget but he was the franchise player for the Bucks, and a primary reason why the league had to Fear the Deer.
“When he was healthy,” explains Ridnour, “we won games. That’s how it was.”
“That was the disappointing thing,” says Bogut. “I finally turned that corner.”
Bogut missed All-Star selection in the Eastern Conference that year. All-Star selections are always tricky affairs; worthy candidates are “snubbed”, spawning all sorts of desultory narratives. That year, Bogut was up against Al Horford for the last big man spot in the East. Horford edged him in the coaches’ ballot, with the Hawks’ superior record seen as the clincher. Allen Iverson then went down with injury, but was replaced in the East squad by David Lee.
Don’t get this the wrong way: Bogut thinks Lee is a deserving All-Star, but there is a part of him that continues to be miffed by the selection process.
“There were a lot of different factors that played into it, but that’s life,” he says. “What’s funny is [that] I was then voted All-NBA third team that same year.”
“[Bogut] definitely should have been an All-Star that year,” asserts Ridnour.
According to Ridnour, when Bogut matched up against fellow elite big men he faced in the regular season, “he was better than them, he played better than them.”
“He cared about winning,” says Ridnour. “He cared about his team.”
It’s almost a game of sliding doors. What if he had made the All-Star game that year, does that alone change the perception of Bogut?
Tragedy then struck.
It’s gruesome. There’s no need to replay that image in our heads. The NBA world shuddered and mourned the devastating injury that curtailed Bogut’s career year. Depressingly, it was on the eve of the Bucks’ playoff run – a run that Bogut deserved to be a part of.
Kurt Thomas inherited the starting center duties, trying to fill the void with his veteran presence, but it was impossible to replace the impact of their franchise guy. The Bucks ultimately flailed and succumbed in the first round against the Hawks, 4-3.
“If we were to have Bogut,” says Ridnour, “I think we could have at least won the first round. Maybe the second round.”
As the years passed, Bogut suffered more “car wreck-type” injuries –- as he calls it -– that threatened to derail his career. He kept fighting, and managed to forge an impactful career that has spanned twelve years to date.
There’s lingering disappointment. Bogut’s career was on the upswing; the possibilities were endless.
“And then I went down with something that really changed the trajectory of my career,” says Bogut. “My shooting touch, and a lot of my strengths that I used went haywire because the touch went out the window. It was really tough, mentally.”
To this day, Bogut still cannot fully extend his right arm, a fact that gets lost in discussions surrounding his effectiveness. It becomes impossible to disentangle Andrew Bogut’s legacy from that singular moment.
“That was the disappointing thing. I finally turned that corner.”
ONCE HE TRUSTS you, you’ll see the real Andrew Bogut.
He will treat you like family. He will take you to only the finest restaurants whilst you're in town.
He's not an opportunist, looking to boost his marketability. He doesn’t really give a f—k about that. He’s just got “old school values," as Giacoletti calls it.
He doesn't hunt for publicity, preferring to do things because he genuinely cares. For three straight years, Goorjian would fly to Milwaukee and spend three or four days with Bogut. And they'd just talk, eat and spend time together. One night returning from dinner, he found bags of signed merchandise –- to be auctioned for charity -– already lined up for him.
"Always thinking of everybody else," insists Goorjian.
“Once he respected you,” adds Ridnour. “He was all in. He was on your side.”
Unfortunately, most people don’t see that. They see the freakishly unlucky injuries, and of course the hard screens. After years of the NBA grind, they see the older, weathered Bogut, the one who walks around with hunched shoulders and a perpetual scowl. They form their perception of Bogut off media narratives and his social media persona.
“Definitely,” agrees Bogut, “but I am not going to defend myself against that, because people will always form an opinion of you from the media.”
That Twitter business doesn’t mean anything; it doesn’t define who he is. Still, that doesn’t stop the masses from ill-formed opinions on his character. “That’s how this business is,” says Bogut.
“I do think he’s probably a little bit misread,” muses Giacoletti.
Amongst those who truly know him, Bogut is unanimously acknowledged as a man with a great heart.
“But he also has a voice,” cautions Giacoletti. And he’s not afraid to use it to share his opinion. “Right or wrong.”
“He’s a straight shooter,” says Ridnour. “He’s not gonna’ sugarcoat it.”
That can get tricky when trust is so hard to find in the NBA, when business is increasingly privileged over loyalty. He grows especially skeptical of the media. Can you blame him?
There are hidden agendas throughout every article, he reasons.
He lives by an old school code: what you see is what you get. “You don’t see that in the NBA all the time,” adds Ridnour.
Bogut has long realised that the league is full of two-faced people.
“It’s funny,” says Bogut. “People will criticize athletes for giving the standard answers and being ‘media trained’, but the moment an athlete doesn’t follow the herd of sheep, they are told to sit down and shut up.”
ANDREJ LEMANIS WAS worried.
The Boomers head coach had been preparing his men for the 2015 Oceania Olympic qualifiers, for over two years. The winner of the series --a two-game slugfest against the New Zealand Tall Blacks-- would be rewarded with automatic entry into the Rio Games. The loser would be thrown into a brutal tournament in the Philippines, featuring a gauntlet of desperate teams from the likes of Turkey, Canada, and France, headlined by Tony Parker.
Back in 2013, fresh off his new appointment, one of Lemanis’ first orders of business was to meet with Andrew Bogut. Lemanis wanted to know about Bogut’s intentions on playing in the international arena. Bogut told him that he’d love to play in the 2016 Olympic Games.
Thrilled, Lemanis cautioned that their Oceania rival, New Zealand, was only getting stronger; their seasoned veterans would be bolstered by young talent rising through the American college system. Australia’s stranglehold on the region, and the automatic Olympic berth that came with it, was no longer a fait accompli.
Lemanis told Bogut that if he committed, he needed him available to face the threat of the Tall Blacks in the evitable 2015 Oceania playoff stoush.
“He was like, ‘yep, as long as I’m fit to play,’” recalled Lemanis. “‘No problems, I’ll play.’”
The problem was that back in 2015, Bogut’s Golden State Warriors became an absolute juggernaut. The Warriors advanced into the postseason as the top seed. Aside from a tougher-than-expected series against the Memphis Grizzlies, the Warriors blasted their way into the NBA Finals.
“They keep getting deeper, and deeper,” recalls Lemanis with a chuckle. “They're playing in June and our camp starts at the start of July.”
Lemanis’ mind was conflicted. He needed Bogut to be available for what promised to be a brutally physical Tall Blacks squad, but he envisaged a spent Bogut, after the grind of a long NBA season, needing downtime. Would Bogut make himself unavailable after all?
So concerned was Lemanis that he rang up Bogut’s Australian agent for some advice. The response he received was simple.
“Andrew told you he’ll play. So he’ll play.”
Great, thought Lemanis. That’s fantastic!
True to his word, Bogut returned to represent his country in that series. The Boomers took out game 1 in Melbourne 71-59, but in less than convincing fashion for some. New Zealand had cut the lead to just 3 points midway through the final term before the Boomers ultimately pulled away. Yet the Tall Blacks left the game with confidence, knowing that the series lead – the winner to be determined by scoring margin – was not insurmountable. The Boomers were no sure thing.
After game one, Bogut couldn’t get out of bed. His back had seized up. But true to form, he did the rehab and got the help that he needed. The center took the court in New Zealand, dominated and ensured the Boomers qualified for Rio.
“He didn’t make a big deal of it,” says Lemanis. He just did it, they won, and the Boomers moved on.
Despite the long NBA season and the injury that almost incapacitated him, Bogut ensured the side qualified for Rio. It’s a memory that remains with Lemanis to this day that encapsulates who Andrew Bogut is.
“If he tells you something, that’s how it is,” says Lemanis. “[He] doesn’t play games.”
Bogut is a straight shooter.
GAME 2 AGAINST the Tall Blacks.
It might have been the quintessential Andrew Bogut game in the green and gold. No other individual tournament or game jumps out at you. You question where Bogut sits amongst the pantheon of the greatest Australian basketballers of all time.
But his impact was nascent; Goorjian credits him as the building block in the renaissance of the national team program. When Goorjian took over in 2001, the national team was struggling with a host of veterans retiring after the Sydney 2000 Olympics.
When Bogut was discovered, the Boomers suddenly had a cornerstone they could build around.
“I would like to think that started in Athens,” says Goorjian, “and Bogut was the guy. He started that – the toughness, the defensive focus.”
It’s not hard to see Bogut’s impact on the inner sanctum.
At the Rio Olympics, Bogut infused the Boomers squad with a self-belief that they could challenge for gold. He made his teammates accountable, and didn’t allow an inferiority complex.
That much was evident when the Boomers walked off the court, after succumbing to Team USA in a pool game. The Boomers should never have come close. This was surely a moral victory.
“It was, but not really. We’re disappointed,” says Bogut, during a courtside interview. “We had every opportunity to try and push that game. We still lost, it doesn’t mean anything.”
For Bogut, there are no moral victories. There is no such thing as merely doing your best. And he’s not afraid to push you to the limit, if that’s what it takes.
“Yes, you might get agitated every now and then,” says close friend and national teammate, Aleks Maric. “But in the long run, he’ll make you a better player.”
Goorjian says that Bogut has this aura. There would often be a palpable tension in the locker room, if the team did not perform up to standard.
“It made everybody uncomfortable,” he says.
“I think at times, perhaps within the Australian landscape, [we] underappreciated just how much Andrew’s been able to achieve,” says Lemanis. “And how much he’s contributed in the Australian basketball landscape.”
To truly appreciate how good Bogut is, you need to look beyond the box score. For Lemanis, that’s something that the majority of basketball fans don’t understand; we gravitate towards scoring and equate raw numbers with quality of performance.
“You need to understand the subtleties of the game,” Lemanis explains.
It’s easy to forget the Boomers sweated over Bogut’s availability for the Rio games, after the big man suffered a knee injury in game 5 of the 2016 NBA Finals.
Lemanis was adamant that Bogut was the missing link in the team’s pre-Rio preparations. The moment Bogut returned into the Boomers lineup, their play began to show signs of flow and continuity.
Bogut’s ability to see the game, get teammates involved, and lead all contributed significantly towards the culture and the mindset of the Boomers. There were countless moments in team practices and in-game huddles, away from the public eye, when Bogut made his mark.
“Those are the bits that are under-appreciated,” says Lemanis.
Lemanis insists he has never had to instruct Bogut on team values. It’s intrinsic within Bogut to do whatever it takes to set an example, whether it be always showing up on time, leading recovery, or just talking teammates through defensive coverages in-game.
“He just does everything you want from a teammate,” he says.
THERE ARE OTHERS who may challenge Bogut’s place at the very top of the pecking order.
A strong case can be made for Luc Longley. Not only was he drafted seventh in the 1991 NBA draft, Longley also became a three-time champion with Jordan's Chicago Bulls, in an NBA career that spanned a decade.
“First,” says Longley, “I think [Bogut] is the most dominant.”
Now an assistant coach with the Boomers, Longley calls Bogut’s basketball intellect within the Boomers team, elite. “I would say he is the best basketball player Australia has ever produced,” he says.
For Anstey, Longley remains the most underappreciated Australian great. Reclusive by nature, Longley also played without the glaring spotlight of social media. But perhaps his greatest legacy is daring the next generation of Australian talent to dream; he made them believe that they too could make it.
“Andrew’s been fortunate to come off the back of Luc [Longley] and really pick up the mantle of Australia’s most successful basketball player,” says Anstey.
Whilst Anstey has a point, it's all relative. Who's to say that social media didn't shield Longley from intense scrutiny? Similarly, the same level of access and engagement has made Bogut an all-too-easy target.
How many Australians have been drafted as the number one overall pick in the world’s preeminent league?
“He’s had an unbelievable career,” says Ridnour. “He should be proud of it.
“He was that guy that you wanted to play with just because he was tough, he was hard-nosed, he wasn’t going to take any crap from anybody. It didn’t matter who it was. And he had your back.
“That’s how I always remember about him and always appreciate about him.”
Is he a great ambassador for the game? Has Andrew Bogut inspired a new legion of juniors to dream big, just as Longley once did?
Will the relative paucity in his international resume affect the way he’ll be remembered long after he’s finished?
“That’s the thing that’s angered me over time,” says Lemanis. “You hear these things around people questioning his commitment to play for Australia. That’s unfortunately ill-informed.”
Though Bogut has missed games for Australia, it’s always been due to injuries, not through indifference. When you’re actually around the man, you see how much it means for him to play for Australia.
What if he had stayed healthy? Where would his career have taken him?
“The beauty of Andrew,” says Giacoletti, “I really don’t think he cares on what others may think.”
Everyone will have an opinion. Some will be generous with praise, rightfully acknowledging his impact not only in the NBA, but within the Australian game. There will always be those who are critical and question where he truly sits within the pantheon of Australian basketball.
“Not overly worried about it, to be honest,” Bogut says.
Sure, basketball is important. Bogut is thankful for what the game has brought him.
“But at the end of it all, there are more important things in my life as I have grown older,” he says.
So perhaps Andrew Bogut doesn’t really give a f—k. There’s your headline, folks. There’s your clickbait.
But that was never the point.
What you really need to know is that Andrew Bogut might not give a damn. But maybe, just maybe, we all should.
Special thanks to Andrew Bogut, Brian Goorjian, Ray Giacoletti, Luke Ridnour, Chris Anstey, Luc Longley, Aleks Maric and Andrej Lemanis. A very big thank you to Ben Mallis for the initial interview with Andrew Bogut.