NBA: Bogut Rips 'two-faced' Former Club Before Facing Warriors

Muhammad Rameez Published November 10, 2016 | 08:55 AM

SAN FRANCISCO, , (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 10th Nov, 2016 ) - Australian big man Andrew Bogut ripped the NBA for "two-faced" and "fake" people ahead of facing his former team, the Golden State Warriors, who traded him to the Dallas Mavericks.

Bogut, sent packing in a deal to help the Warriors make room to sign star forward Kevin Durant, spoke to USA Today ahead of his return to Oakland with the Mavericks on Wednesday to face a Warriors club he helped to an NBA crown in 2015.

"There's no doubt it's disappointing to leave one of the best teams, record-wise those last two years. You leave a team like that and it's a once in a lifetime opportunity," Bogut said. "It was bitter in a way.

I wasn't mad at anybody about it. I understood it completely. I'm not stupid. "But yeah, you're disappointed leaving guys who you battled for a championship with, and guys where everyone understood their role.

It was just fun to play and be a part of that team, because every day you came in to work and everyone knew their role and accepted it." Asked about questions over his durability following a left knee injury in the NBA Finals this year when the Warriors surrendered the crown to Cleveland, Bogut was critical of remarks questioning his staying power.

"I don't buy into all that (expletive) because this league is so two-faced and everybody is so fake," Bogut told the newspaper. "The same people who made those comments will see me tomorrow and shake my hand and ask me how my family is.

"It's very hard to meet a genuine person who you can call your friend in this league. That's just the reality, and I understand that. People can take parting shots. I didn't have a great finals series, obviously, with the injury, and finish off the way I wanted to, but that's the way it goes.

I'm not bitter about it." The Mavericks are off to a 2-5 start after dropping their first five games of the campaign while the Warriors are 5-2. Bogut, who spent his first seven NBA seasons at Milwaukee and his next four at Golden State, averaged 5.4 points, 7.0 rebounds and 2.3 assists a game last season, when the Warriors went 73-9, the best regular-season record in NBA history.