Can we forget about his draft status and concentrate on his skills base. We have debated the number 1 pick too many times to count.....
At the moment I'd say Bogut is developing as expected. The greater issues which stunt Boguts development as been two bad coaches and having a cast of chuckers and rejects to work with.
Both Stotts and Larry K couldn't work out how to properly use Bogut. In his rookie season the Bucks had Magloire on the books and were playing Bogut at the power forward position. Probably a position he has never played in his life and Stotts begins his NBA career there... Idiot...
Stotts was also in love with Michael Redd and Mo Williams was starting to turn heads. Bogut was third on the pecking list, but may as well been last behind those two chuckers.
Stotts never use to run offensive sets for Bogut and if he did get it in the block he was expected to hit the cutter or open man (aka Redd / Mo).
Stotts has sacked and along came Larry K. Larry K is a defensive coach. As a player he was a defender and hustler. This worked to Boguts advantage on the defensive end, hence Boguts vast improvement in that area (he's the only Buck that plays defence). Larry K still deferred to Redd (after all, Redd is a max contract purely for offence) and Mo. When the Bucks went to Bogut and ran constant sets for him he was great. Towards the end of the season he was putting up awesome numbers.
In the last 20 games Bogut averaged 16.1ppg, 11.3rpb, 2.9apg, 1.1spg and 1.7bpg.
Over the past three years, Bogut has improved his numbers across the board. He really needs to improve his FT%. Last season he averaged 14.3 ppg, and shot 58.7% from the line. If he could improve it to 70-75% it would probably boost him up to around the 17-18ppg mark. I'd also like to see him shoot better from the floor. 51% isn't good enough for a 7 footer. Lets say he gets this up to 55-56% and that's maybe an extra 2-3ppg. He's now average around 18-20ppg simply via shooting a little better.
The one area I think he really needs to work on is his mental game. If things are going rough at the beginning and not going his way he tends to drop his head and pout a bit. IMO this also reflects on the coaching staff as he had no one he relates to or offer him guidance. It was funny that last season Boguts Australian coach flew over and Boguts game improved heaps. Bogut also flew him out for pre-season this season, and Bogut improved leaps and bounds.
I'd also like to see some more consistency in his game. Lets take his last 5 games:
Denver: 12 points / 20 rebounds
@ Toronto: 8 points / 2 rebounds
@ Minnesota: 24 points / 15 rebounds
Chicago: 25 points / 8 rebounds
New Jersey: 7 points / 8 rebounds
Great numbers, but what happened against Toronto and the Nets???
Anyway, I think Bogut is well on the way to a long career in the NBA. I also do wonder what would of happened if the Bucks tutored Bogut properly like the Lakers did with Bynum. Just how much better would Bogut be if he was developed by Kareem or another top quality big man like Ewing, Malone, Robinson or Hakeem????
