Andrew Bogut has been out with an injury for the last three Dubs games, but coach Mark Jackson couldn’t figure out when he got injured. Jackson made a — to him — innocuous comment about Bogut possibly hurting himself while he was sleeping before the third game last night. The sleeping assertion was relayed to Bogut by reporters (because of course it was), and he claimed it was “absolutely ridiculous.”
Jackson said before the game, he had no idea how Bogut got hurt. Via Diamond Leung of the San Jose Mercury News:
“As far as I know, it was not on the court,” Jackson said. “It wasn’t in practice. It wasn’t in a game. I’m not really sure. It may have been sleeping, and I say that in all seriousness, but it’s important for us to make sure we continue to treat him, it’s legitimate, and then let’s be smart with it. We’re looking ahead at a whole week of rest and recovery, and we need him.”
Bogut wasn’t too happy when told about the comments, obviously, telling reporters, by way of Rusty Simmons at the San Francisco Chronicle:
“I just wanted to address that the sleeping comment is absolutely ridiculous. I don’t know where it came from. I don’t know if I should read between the lines with it. The frustrating thing is: I don’t know when I hurt it against Utah (on Jan. 31). I just know after that game, it was a little sore. It hasn’t gotten better.”
[…]
“I don’t know where (the sleeping comment) came from or if he heard that from the trainer or from somebody, but it’s definitely not the case,” Bogut said. “It’s not like I just woke up after sleeping on my shoulder wrong. I have a bone bruise and swelling in my shoulder. That coming from sleeping is very highly unlikely, I believe.”
In Jackson’s post-game comments following Golden State’s throttling of Philly, he addressed the back-and-forth with Bogut in a somewhat angry missive, transcribed by the Bay Area Sports Guy:
“Before I get to Mo [Marreese Speights] I just want to address something from earlier. I made a statement about Andrew Bogut. My statement said ‘legitimate.’ My statement said I had the same thing. My statement said that he was hurt. Please don’t twist my words. Understand this also — you will never see a problem in my locker room. You will not see a problem in my locker room, with my group. We are tied together, we are committed. This is not the old culture. This is a new culture. Thank you.”
After a few more questions, ESPN’s Ethan Sherwood Strauss brought it back to Bogut and asked Jackson how he felt his words had been twisted:
“Well, you can make it seem like I said something against Bogut. That he slept and got hurt. I understand how you can take that and think, ‘Coach just took a shot at him.’ I said he legitimately was hurt. I expressed how it happened. So please put the whole thing in there, and not half the story. I was part of the media. I understand how you can make it much more appealing, and go for the home run. But in three years, in the 23-win season, I didn’t throw anybody under the bus. And you can wait and wait and wait, and it won’t happen here until somebody else is sitting here. That’s not my M.O. And contrary to the choir, it won’t be my M.O. I believe in every one of my guys and I’m proud of what we’ve been able to do. And I’ll go down being me. I can’t be anybody else.”
Jackson keeps a pretty tight locker-room, and as a former player he probably respects the sanctity of keeping problems in-house, more so than some other coaches. So this seems on the surface like a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing except a slow news day. Still, Jackson did make the sleeping comment, and he had to foresee where that was headed. For someone supposedly so plugged in to the ebb and flow of his own locker-room, Jackson should have known to refrain from the sleeping speculation when asked about Bogut’s injury.
While the reporters involved don’t appear to have taken Jackson’s comment as a dig at his center, Bogut certainly did as evidenced by his comments after-the-fact. According to Jackson, he spoke with Bogut before the game and got everything worked out, but if he doesn’t want the media to “twist his words,” as he implied, he should use better words and eschew using sleep as a theoretical cause for his player’s injury.
(via PBT)
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