Healing Bogut heads to Australia for off-season break

Milwaukee Bucks center Andrew Bogut is slowly healing from the injuries that kept him out of the NBA playoffs and looking forward to going home to Australia for an off-season rest break.

Bogut flies home to Melbourne on Tuesday and will talk about his possible participation in the World Champonships later this week, but except for a brief US return for a cast removal around May 25, the seven-footer wants to relax.

"I want to see my family and friends and just clear my head," Bogut told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. "With my cast on for another three or four weeks, I just want to get home and be around people I grew up with."

Bogut suffered a broken right index finger and dislocated right elbow and well as breaking other bones in his right arm during an April 3 fall in a home game against Phoenix, missing the Bucks' NBA playoff run.

The Aussie was reduced to a spectator in a Sunday loss at Atlanta that saw the Bucks drop their best-of-seven first-round series in seven games.

"Did I enjoy it? No. I played almost 75 games this year and was pretty much injury-free, barring a freak thing. Having that taken away from me at the end of the season is pretty frustrating," Bogut said.

"You never want to be satisfied with being eliminated from the playoffs. We want to build on this year. We think we're capable of getting home-court advantage, whether it's next year or the year after."

Bogut averaged 15.9 points and 10.2 rebounds in his fifth NBA season and ranked second in the NBA with 2.5 blocked shots a game.

As a result, Bucks officials had expressed concern about Bogut playing for Australia in the World Championships this August even before his season-ending injuries.

"The elbow is pretty much healed. I'm just getting the swelling out," Bogut said. "The wrist feels good already. The finger is the thing that worries the doctors because the ligaments were still attached when I broke it.

"There's a slight chance it can still re-break very easily in the first few weeks of rehab so they're worried about me not trying to push myself the first couple weeks.

"Whether it's the end of June or early July, I don't know, but I'm definitely banking on having a couple solid months of basketball training before coming to Milwaukee."

Bucks coach Scott Skiles said the next few months of development will be important for Bogut.

"He has shown a lot of improvement," Skiles said. "He's better in the low post. He's always a good defender. He needs to even get better in the low post and make a face-up shot to keep people honest.

"He needs to come back and be in great shape and ready to go."

Dropping some weight has helped Bogut's performance.

"My knees aren't sore anymore and my back isn't sore anymore so it was a success for me," he said.

Bogut also learned how to contribute better defensively even on nights when his scoring touch was merely average.

"The biggest thing was to work on my consistency," Bogut said. "In games where I wasn't scoring well or shooting the ball well, I tried to impact the game by blocking shots, taking charges, getting rebounds."