Five months after the injury that shelved him for the Bucks first meaningful playoff run in quite some time, we’re still playing the guessing game when it comes to Andrew Bogut’s health.  Unlike Scrabble, this game isn’t so fun.  And it causes people to start to wonder just what the suits in the ivory towers in St. Francis at the Bucks Headquarters are up to.

What appeared to be a rather simple process of hand surgery, the relocating of a dislocated elbow (this may or may not be so simple) and a month or so of rehab, has turned into another unfortunate Bogut injury problem that threatens the start of the Bucks season.  But what was first reported as the area that needed surgery, Bogut’s hand, doesn’t appear to be the problem any more.

When Bogut was first injured, it looked like he’d need a bionic arm to do something as simple as brush his teeth going forward.  It was a gruesome, horrific sight that left fans in the stands out of breath and those at home changing the channel.  His most serious injury had to be the elbow.  Or so we thought.  Two days after his fall however, Bogut was having hand surgery, his elbow was dislocated and his wrist was sprained.

A collective, “huh?” was the response.  Hand surgery?  For a guy who’s elbow was facing the wrong way?  Obviously all that weight crashing down onto Bogut’s entire arm would have effects on areas outside of the elbow, but the reported wrist sprain and elbow dislocation seemed less serious than a hand that required surgery.  But here we are and it turns out our initial reactions were correct.  In an interview (transcribed here) done in August, four months after the initial injury, Bogut doesn’t even mention his hand as an issue, but has bad news on the elbow.

“I’m still not even shooting the basketball,” Bogut said.  “I shot the ball a little bit in Europe and got a bunch of fluid down in my elbow so I had to stop shooting. So at the moment I’m just lifting weights and conditioning so we’ll see what happens.” Read more…