Aussies in NBA: Mavericks still cautious with Bogut's health

After playing in 70 games for the Golden State Warriors last season, Dallas Mavericks fans were hopeful that Andrew Bogut had shaken the injury bug for good. Maybe he wouldn't start and play 30 minutes per game for 82 games, but somewhere between 68 to 75 games would have been a reasonable target.

Well it hasn't quite panned out like that.

Through 50 games this season, including today's match with the Portland Trail Blazers, Bogey has played in just 25 of them.

https://twitter.com/MFollowill/status/827700717938892800

It's simple math to work out that this projects to just 41 games in the regular season, which may in itself already be an optimistic estimate if he continues to be dogged by health problems. It would also mark just the fourth time in 12 seasons that he's played in fewer than 65 games. So even by his not-great standards of injury proneness, this might turn out to be one of his worst seasons.

His latest injury came in the victory against the San Antonio Spurs, and he hasn't played since then. It's once again a hamstring bothering him, and that makes it three separate lower body injuries since early December.

Given coach Rick Carlisle's comments before on how Dallas doesn't want to take any chances with Bogut's health, preferring to err on the side of caution, it's likely that he will miss the next game against the Denver Nuggets as well, and who knows how many more.

Well, at least he's in good humour about it:

https://twitter.com/andrewbogut/status/826946162485760001

Get well soon Bogey, we miss you!