Dallas Mavericks center Andrew Bogut has been granted his wish of coming off the bench.
The big fella has come to the realization that playing alongside superstar teammate Dirk Nowitzki simply doesn’t work.
Mavs C Andrew Bogut will be coming off the bench for the foreseeable future. "There's no point of starting with… https://t.co/rb0vz5ycob
— Tim MacMahon (@espn_macmahon) January 3, 2017
Bogut and Nowitzki have only played 53 minutes together this season—getting outscored by 62 points—largely due to the future Hall of Famer’s injuries:
“There’s no point of starting with Dirk and then getting pulled 30 seconds into a game,” Bogut told ESPN after Tuesday’s shootaround. “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.'”
“I still think when I’m completely healthy on my normal minutes that somehow we’ve got to play together,” said Nowitzki, who praised Bogut for his willingness to sacrifice for the good of the team. “We’ve just got to make it work some and find ways to get some good stops and offensively get some good possessions. I’m not ready to throw in the towel on our 4-5 combo there, but so far it hasn’t looked great.”
Bogut, 32, is skeptical that he can play with Nowitzki except for the rare occasions when the opponents uses two traditional big men. […] “Look, maybe one or two games here and there, but it puts Dirty in a bind because he’s got to be guarding a 3 or a 4 man,” said Bogut, who recently missed 11 games due to a bone bruise in his knee. “You look at the Houston game and he’s guarding Trevor Ariza or [Patrick] Beverley and I’m guarding a big. You do the math and that just won’t work. In short bursts, every now and then, maybe [it will work] if we play a team that has two bigs in there. But for the most part, the way the league’s going, you have the Ariza-type guys at the 4. I don’t see it.”
