This past Friday, Golden State Warriors sixth man Andre Iguodala had his ankle violently rolled on by Portland Trail Blazers point guard Damian Lillard. Because of it, Iguodala will be missing two weeks of playing time after the MRI results came back. That doesn’t sit well with center Andrew Bogut.
From Bogut’s personal Twitter account late Saturday evening:
Interesting no one is talking about a wreckless play from this week. Guess its just the "top 5 dirty" players who are capable. #checkthetape
— Andrew Bogut (@andrewbogut) March 13, 2016
We have to assume that Bogut is referring to the play that saw Lillard roll up on Iguodala’s ankle as the Warriors were up big, but he’s also referring to a poll that came out that had players, assistants, and coaches rank the Australian as the third dirtiest player in the league behind only Matthew Dellavedova and Steven Adams. All three are from Australia or New Zealand.
This obviously irks Bogut, and no one certainly wants to be labeled as a dirty player. So when one of his own guys gets taken out on a play that he thinks crossed a little bit of a line, he’s going to let people know about it. Lillard isn’t really a dirty player, and this was a first time offense for him.
However, in Bogut’s mind, this was a big deal and is something that people should be talking about more than they are. It’s never good when someone suffers that severe of an ankle injury, but it’s hard to say whether or not Lillard meant to injure Iguodala.
The two teams play for the final time on April 3rd, so maybe we’ll see if there’s anything in store for that game. Oh, and it is at Oracle.
When watching the game, it seemed that Lillard was really upset about how the Blazers were taking such a beat-down. He started jacking threes from all over the place and making most of them and decided to try a big defensive play/steal on Ig that took Ig’s ankle out. To me, it seemed Lillard was playing smash-mouth BB because he had lost control of his emotions and Igoudala suffered for it. Lillard definitely plays with a chip on his shoulder which is fine as long as other people don’t end up hurt because of it. I used to like Lillard but am losing respect for him with his petulance about Kerr’s innocent comments and his on-court seemingly little-man-syndrome this year.