Bogut now has two NBA seasons under his belt after being drafted #1 overall by the Bucks in the 2005 NBA Draft. (Getty Images)

Those who weren’t playing on U-10 club or fourth-grade elementary school teams were no doubt wearing out their sneakers on their driveways, neighborhood playgrounds or at local recreation centers every day.

Taking this into consideration, anyone familiar with Andrew Bogut’s early athletic upbringing and the high basketball IQ he possesses today has to be amazed at how rapidly his learning aptitude and his passionate dedication bridged the gap between them.

Those same qualities also helped build the bridge he crossed from Australia to the United States and a career in the premier basketball league in the world.

If Bogut hadn’t possessed and applied those qualities, he might still be playing televised sports –- albeit with a different-shaped ball on some obscure cable channel in the wee hours of the morning.

“When I was a kid, I played a lot of Australian rules football, and I played tennis,” Bogut said. “Australian rules football is the biggest sport there (in ‘The Land Down Under’).”

Bogut played basketball, too, but did not specialize in the sport until he reached his middle teens.

“I really loved the game since I started playing at about 10 or 11 years of age, but I was just playing locally and on an AAU type of team in Australia,” he said. “We’d play about three or four games a week.

“I was probably about 15 when I got serious about it. That’s when I really started getting into it, where it became a now-or-never type of thing.”

At that point, Bogut believes he made one of the wisest decisions of his life.

“I hired a private personal trainer,” he said. “I was always serious about the game, but didn’t really have a guide. Once I started training, I realized, ‘Hey, if I keep working hard, I can make something of this.’”

Under the tutelage of Sinisa Markovic, Bogut’s basketball career experienced a boom. Little did Bogut know at the time that it would one day earn him a prominent role with the “Boomers,” Australia’s national team.

“First I began playing on Australia’s Junior National Team,” he said. “That helped my development along, playing against other guys in the world who were my age. Then after that, it was college and the national team. Playing on the Junior National Team really helped me gain confidence and realize I could play against the best in the world.”

As a youngster, Bogut developed a keen interest in the best basketball players in the world. He patterned his game after the player who made one of the first and strongest impressions on him.

“Toni Kukoc was actually kind of the guy that I played like when I was younger,” Bogut said. “I played outside a little bit more than I do now, handled the ball, put up a couple of 3s a game.

“That would have been the guy I looked up to the most, and with him being Croatian (Bogut is of Croatian descent), that helped me, too.”

While other players his age were developing fascinations with the high-wire acts of NBA All-Stars and slam dunk champions, Bogut was becoming enthralled with the subtle substance and efficiency and team-first mentality of Kukoc’s game.

“He was a basketball player,” Bogut said of Kukoc, who ironically became one of his original NBA teammates last season. “He wasn’t just one of these guys in the league who’s strictly there to be strong, be a banger and nothing else, just one-dimensional.

“It’s a rarity these days to find a guy with a great basketball IQ who just goes out there and plays for the team. Most Europeans do it, and a few Americans do it, but it’s tough to find those guys.”

Bogut is grateful now that he was thoroughly schooled in basketball fundamentals during the formative years of his career, not only by watching Kukoc, but at the direction of his Aussie coaches.

“I watched a lot of NBA basketball as a kid,” he said. “The key to that was drilling it every day. Here the kids sort of roll the ball out and play pickup games. In Europe, when we got to play one-on-one or even five-on-five during practice, it was like heaven, because we’d never be allowed to do it otherwise.

“That’s how it was for me and my trainer. I know it’s a big thing in Europe, too. You have two- or three-hour sessions where you just dribble through cones and stuff like that.”

Bogut proved to be an extremely willing and quick learner, and his diligence would be rewarded.

Continue on to Part 2 ...