Andrew Bogut has accumulated a lot of wear on his 32-year-old tires, and it looks like he has accepted the reality that comes along with it.
According to Tim MacMahon of ESPN, the Dallas Mavericks big man will be coming off the bench for the foreseeable future after volunteering to do so.
“There’s no point of starting with Dirk [Nowitzki] and then getting pulled 30 seconds into a game,” Bogut said after team shootaround on Tuesday. “So I went to coach and said, ‘If you’re going to continue to do that, just bring me off the bench. I won’t be offended. We’ll get on with life.'”
Mavericks head coach Rick Carlisle confirmed that Bogut went to him last week and requested to come off the bench.
MacMahon also notes that Dallas has had problems pairing Bogut and the 38-year-old Nowitzki together in the frontcourt and have been outscored by 62 points in the 53 minutes the two have played next to each other this season. That makes sense considering the age and the lack of mobility of both players.
Bogut, who has been limited to 18 games this season with a bone bruise in his right knee, is averaging a career-low 3.5 points to go along with 9.9 rebounds, and 0.9 blocks per game. It’s a tough pill to swallow to be coming off the bench for a 10-24 Dallas squad after starting for Golden State Warriors teams that took home the NBA title in 2014-15 and won 73 games in 2015-16. But kudos to the witty Australian big man for embracing the transition gracefully.
