Bogut-Watch

[J@3]

I'll keep this running the whole season if I have to, it's a thread dedicated to Australian basketballing personality Andrew Bogut, projected #1 overall pick and a "stiff" because he's tall and white.

He had a workout with the Hawks after impressing the Bucks the other day, they seemed pretty impressed aswell...

Bogut impresses Hawks during individual workout
By JONATHAN LANDRUM Jr., Associated Press Writer
June 24, 2005

ATLANTA (AP) -- Andrew Bogut's versatility around the basket and ability to run the court impressed the Atlanta Hawks during a workout session Friday.

The only problem is that the Milwaukee Bucks might very well pick the 7-footer first in the NBA draft Tuesday before the Hawks can use their No. 2 pick.

``It's nothing we can do about it,'' Hawks general manager Billy Knight said. ``The good thing is that we've seen four good players. Milwaukee only gets to take one of those guys. After they pick, we'll have our choice between three guys.''

Point guards Chris Paul and Deron Williams and forward Marvin Williams worked out earlier in the week for the Hawks.

Bogut would be a major upgrade for a lackluster frontcourt. He averaged 20.4 points and 12.2 rebounds per game at Utah last season, earning The Associated Press player of the year. He also led the Utes to the third round of the NCAA tournament for first time since 1998.

``He did great in his workouts,'' Knight said. ``For the most part, he did everything we asked of him. He has a lot of potential and upside.''

The most highly regarded player behind Bogut is Marvin Williams, who was a sixth-man for national champion North Carolina in his one year in college. But the Hawks already have forwards Josh Smith, Josh Childress and Al Harrington.

Since Paul or Deron Williams could fall to the fifth or sixth spot, the Hawks might consider trading the No. 2 pick.

``There has been some conversations, but nothing we're interested in,'' Knight said.

Bogut went through an assortment of drills for the coaches and team owners who haven't seen him before.

One of the biggest knocks against Bogut has been his footwork. It's tough to evaluate a player during individual drills, but the Australian believed he did just fine.

``Some people think that I'm not athletic enough to jump and move,'' Bogut said after his morning workout for the Hawks at Philips Arena. ``I'm athletic. I just wanted to show that I can run up and down the court, have good ball-handling skills and shoot the mid-range jumper.''

When Bogut worked out for Milwaukee on Monday, he easily predicted a starting lineup for the Bucks that included himself. Asked if he had an idea about Atlanta, he answered, ``No, not yet.''

But after gathering his thoughts, he finally gave an answer.

``At point guard Tyronn Lue, Josh Childress and Josh Smith, Al (Harrington) at the four, and myself at center,'' he said. ``Depending on the situation at point guard, that's how it might look.

``But most importantly, I want to be the No. 1 pick.''

Georgia Tech guard Will Bynum and Arizona shooting guard Salim Stoudamire also worked out for the Hawks on Friday.

There's also a great 2 piece interview with Bogut at DraftExpress.com...

http://draftexpress.com/viewarticle.php?a=1011
http://draftexpress.com/viewarticle.php?a=1013

Also this story about his Bucks workout

http://www.jsonline.com/sports/buck/jun05/335231.asp

And to finish it off a Q and A from NBA.com...

How did the workout with the Bucks go?
I think it went pretty well. I didn’t shoot the ball like I would have liked, but I think all of the facets of my game were fine. I think they saw some things they didn’t think I could do, like getting up and down the court and my vertical leap was pretty much on par with Marvin Williams. And people always say he’s very athletic, so … I showed them that I could jump and that I could get down the court.

A lot of fans are curious as to what number you would pick if you came to Milwaukee, seeing as how your traditional #4 is a retired number in Milwaukee.
I honestly haven’t thought about it one bit. I just heard about it the other day and I’m not going to think about it until I’m drafted. It’d be like saying I need to look for a house in Milwaukee today. I’m not going to do that, certainly. So I want to know where I’m going to be at before I start thinking about that.

Speaking of Milwaukee, have you been here before?
I was here for about four days during the NCAA Tournament. And one of my good friends is from Milwaukee. I like it. I like the smaller cities. I’m not a big fan of going to the bigger cities, but you often have no choice. I haven’t really been out yet in the city, but I’ve been to a few restaurants and have liked what I’ve seen.

One fan wrote in and wanted to know what parts of your game you're trying to improve. Are there any specific aspects?
Not really. I think all aspects of my game need improvement for me to be a more perfect player. There’s not just one thing I’m going to be working on. NBA three-point shooting does come to mind. I know I can shoot it – though I didn’t shoot it that well today - and I know I want to incorporate it more into my game.

What's it like being a possible #1 pick, with all of the media and fan hype?
That’s why basketball is such a great game in the States. It wouldn’t be like this in Australia. It’s definitely exciting to be a part of it. At times it can be nerve-racking in a way just because there’s so much to get through, but that’s just part of the job.

Now, you were born in Austraila, but you have Croatian ties?
Yeah. I’ve never actually lived in Croatia, but my whole family is there. My sister and I are first generation Australians. We’ve been to Croatian schools and Croatian community clubs. So we’re basically half-and-half. I speak the Croatian language a little bit and my mom’s cooking is Croatian.

Could you carry on a conversation with Toni Kukoc, a Croatian native?
Probably for a little while. Some of it’s hard. There’s a lot of slang and other parts that I don’t know. And since I haven’t actually lived there, they speak too fast for me. But I could definitely carry on a conversation.

We know you've been asked this hundreds of times before, but what kind of edge does having international experience give you?
You’re playing against men. Fully-developed men that just want to pound you. That’s how you learn. I’ve played against NBA players, too. I’ve played against guys that have been all around the world playing in different leagues and trying to survive. It’s different than the American game. It’s just an experience that’s invaluable. You can’t get it in college or high school. And when you get to the NBA, you’re sort of ready for the banging around and intimidation factor and it doesn’t affect you as much. That’s why I think a lot of Europeans that come over here aren’t affected by the crowds that much.

One fan asked if you like to compare yourself to any particular NBA player. Do you?
I don’t really like to compare myself to anybody. But I guess I’d like to be like a Tim Duncan-type player. He’s fundamentally sound and very good at what he does.

How much are you looking forward to your rookie NBA season?
I’m looking forward to it. I can’t wait for it to start. I haven’t played a game since last spring, obviously. Just eager to get started and prove to people that I can play in this league.

[MaD_hAND1e]

from the ESPN ad.... Bogut mumbles like Shaq.

[Jowe]

I like how he states that people always say that he doesn't have potential even though he is still 20 or 19 as espn have it. Yet marvin williams has ENORMOUS HUGE upside, yet he is only 1 year younger.

[J@3]

Add to the fact that Boguts improvement from his 1st year in college to his 2nd year is more than almost any other player I can remember. He was like a 14 a game guy as a freshman and a borderline lottery pick so it's not as if he's reached his peak.

[Fresh8]

He makes a good note to say how he's had so much more experience than anyone else in the draft. I can't remember if he's said this before but IMO since he's played in so many events/tournaments, some people tend to think he's a bit older than he really is and have that stereotype that he has less room for improvement.

[Dreadnight]

thank god, a good center to the league (at least i hope so)

[cyanide]

I'm really enjoying some of his quotes so far.

[Drex]

Fully-developed men that just want to pound you.

[air gordon]

lol so do any of you aussies want to have a bogut bust type of bet involving sigs?

[maes]

He's destined to be the 2nd greatest Aussie center after Lauren Jackson.

[COOLmac©]

i thought luc longley was the greatest Aussie center

[Air Jordon]

I just watched an interview with him and then williams right after. I live near Milwaukee so it was on a milwaukee news station. But after seeing the interviews it makes me think that Bogut should be the #1 pick. Williams seems like he will be good too but he is only 18, and the bucks could use Bogut more. He seems like a smart guy, already has his own community thing going on that will help kids from his homeland, utah, croatia, and which ever team drafts him. He seems like he would dive for loose balls and do whatever it takes to win a game.

"from the ESPN ad.... Bogut mumbles like Shaq."

He does kind of mumbles but not as bad as Shaq and he sounds like a pretty intelligent guy.

I hope the bucks end up taking Bogut......

[MaD_hAND1e]

"from the ESPN ad.... Bogut mumbles like Shaq."

He does kind of mumbles but not as bad as Shaq and he sounds like a pretty intelligent guy.

lol I was thinking the contrary.

[The X]

where are all those people who said about half a year ago that Bogut wasn't a top 5 pick or even a lottery pick when Jae, Sit, I and all the other Aussies pegged him as a mid-to-high lotto pick?!?

[Fresh8]

haha... after we raved about his performance at the world juniors... then disappeared in his Freshman season at Utah and then went to the Olympics... those were the days. Us Aussies gotta be proud on Wednesday!

[The X]

he was awesome in World Juniors....I remember from the highlights, he had awesome footwork and postmoves, and was pretty quick and athletic for a big....although when I saw him next as a fresh at Utes he seemed to have lost some of that athleticism....guess it has to do with bulk....but yep, when I saw him at World Juniors, I knew he'd be the next Aussie in the NBA....

[J@3]

The scary thing is, he's now even better then that.

As far as Bogut in the NBA goes, he said in the interview I posted ...

Andrew Bogut: Just to improve day by day and game by game. If I start off for example having two points and two boards my first game, then have three and three my next game and then four and four after that. I just want to have a steady pace to keep improving my game, I don’t want to start off having twenty and twenty and then the next five games have nothing, you know?

Unfortunately if he doesn't get 20/20 in his first game everyone'll see him as a bust, but still.

[air gordon]

so no takers??? it would be just for fun, nothing bitter, knowing that a lot of aussies post here.

of course there would be some numbers we'd have to agree on before the bet happens

[Fresh8]

oh yeah... and Steven knew him!

Steven and Andrew bogut

[J@3]

Stevan.

And air gordon: this only comes around once in a lifetime for us, I don't want to jinx it

[Fresh8]

my bad! Stevan... theres too many different ways to spell it....

[air gordon]

only comes around once in a lifetime....a player carrying a lot of expectations from his homeland.. thiss sounds awfully yao ming-esque

you guys better take it easy on yao ming & some of their fans now

ah c'mon.. you guys are no fun. may as well try something since you're going to be talking about him after every game

i'd like the guy to succeed. he looks like he has the skills and from the interviews i've seen, he's got personality.

i'll be ordering league pass again so i'll be able to follow most of his games

[J@3]

Lol Yao Ming has been constantly in my mind since every second post of mine in NBA Talk became Bogut related. Personally I don't plan on becoming a Bucks fan any time soon, and if he's shit I'll just ignore him. Who cares, he's Croatian anyways

[kevC]

Here's a hopeful scenario for you Aussies...

You last visited on Tue 07 Dec, 2004
The time now is Tue 28 Jun, 2005
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I don't check these boards for over 6 months and there doesn't appear to be one single Andrew Bogut thread. I know that we Australian's aren't raised to appear overly patriotic, but still...

With the NBA draft coming up, I thought that it would be an appropriate time to take a look at what the future may hold...



Here's a little snippet of the theory behind the generation of these sort of images, if you're interested (being away from these forums has obviously not helped my sanity):

When Einstein was first getting into the scientific scene, everybody "knew" that light was a form of wave motion involving changing electric and magnetic fields. The work that Einstein received his Nobel Prize for (which set things in motion for the scientific world to be turned on its head) suggested that that light actually comes in definite packets, or quanta, and that light is not a continuous wave. These quanta of light are known as photons.

One particularly interesting thing about these photons is that time has no meaning for them. Relativity theory tells us that each individual has his/her own personal measure of time, depending on how fast he/she is moving. Moving clocks run slow, and the closer they get to the speed of light, the slower they go. Since photons move at the speed of light, time stands still for them. So, thinking about these photons and counter-intuitive facts about time naturally led to my thinking about the possibility of looking into the past or the future.

A lot's been made of the fact that Einstein's general theory of relativity can allow for time travel to occur. General relativity implies that there is a "curving" of space, and that there are different rates of time flow in different parts of the universe depending on the gravitational fields within the universe. Without going into the details, if you push Einstein's equations to the limit and take a look at black holes, the distortions of space and time caused by these things could let someone travel through time provided the technology to manipulate black holes were available. Though this sort of macroscopic level time travel does sound fascinating, it would be very difficult to achieve and is still very much a part of science fiction.

What can't be denied is that the general theory of relativity forces us to realize that our intuitive understanding of the world as a three-dimensional space in which there is a linear flow of time is only based on our limited experience of the physical world. Things called "space-time diagrams" can be used in relativistic physics to picture the interaction between various sub-atomic particles. An analysis of these diagrams tells us that particle interactions can be pictured as the same process evolving in different directions through time, and that the different interpretations are mathematically identical. It is believed that our everyday experience of the flow of time is linked to the expansion of the universe from a hotter to a cooler state.

So, to toy with time, do we need to be able to warp space-time, or travel at near light speed? Or is it possible to move beyond our everyday experience of time via other means? Listen to Buddhists, or most Eastern mystics in general, and you might just think so.

It seems that many of us tend to associate anything that extends beyond our everyday experience of the world with divinity. Buddhists aim to move beyond the suffering and frustrations of the everyday human situation, with the direct mystical experience of reality as the final goal. Could the modern scientific description of reality be the same reality described by Buddhists?


Louis De Broglie described our experience of space-time from the standpoint of moden physics as follows:

In space-time, everything which for each of us constitutes the past, the present, and the future is given en bloc ... Each observer, as his time passes, discovers, so to speak, new slices of space-time which appear to him as successive aspects of the material world, though in reality the ensemble of events constituting space-time exist prior to his knowledge of them.

Compare this to the following description concerning Buddhist meditation by Lama Govinda, and the parallels seem uncanny:

If we speak of the space experience in meditation, we are dealing with an entirely different dimension ... In this space-experience the temporal sequence is converted into a simultaneous co-existence, the side by side existence of things ... and this does not remain static but becomes a living continuum in which time and space are integrated.

Having mentioned all of that, would it be completely out of the question to suggest that through meditation practices, a state of mind can be achieved in which information regarding future events can be obtained? Though performing meditation for such purposes is completely frivolous and plays no part in the Buddha's precribed path towards the state of Buddhahood, such practices have indeed been perfomed. The physical manifestations (e.g. EEG) of the cognitive processes achieved during these meditation practices have been able to be manipulated in a manner such that visual images from the future are able to be generated. Though the precise means by which these manipulations are undertaken have been heavily guarded by researchers, several such images have been released to the public. The following image is of a newspaper article concerning one of the opening games from next year's NBA season:

SEE NEWSPAPER IMAGE EARLIER ON IN THIS POST

As you can see, from this image it looks as though the Bucks are going to make Andrew Bogut the number one draft pick (and it also looks as though Phil Jackson won't quite cease his little jabs at Kobe Bryant). It should be noted that by having this image released to the public, the notion of free will heavily comes into play, which could end up producing a future different to the worldline suggested by the image. In fact, the predictions of the future from the generated image could be more accurately described as a description of a future reality, in which the details specified by the newspaper article have a good chance of taking place in this worldline. I won't go into the philosophical debates surrounding this line of reasoning in too much detail, but it basically involves Hugh Everett's Many World's Theory.

[J@3]

Gene needs a girlfriend.

Anyways, Bogut's all over the news here it's great to see Aussie TV presenters trying to act like they know what they're talking about. Prime example, David Koch or however it's spelt... the annoying bald guy...

Female Host: Well that's great for him, I love those stories when someone's told they'll never be able to do something then they go and do it...

David: He's a 7 footer with the skills of a guard *sits looking blankly to the right of screen*

It was weird.