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|Keith Bogans

Mike Curtis: The #Pistons just announced a bunch of new additions and promotions within the team’s basketball and business operations departments. Of note, Keith Bogans, Rasheed Lewis and Brandon Bailey have joined the staff as assistant coach/player development coaches. pic.twitter.com/Y9aU5qpKQx

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Keith Bogans on his fallout with the Celtics: A radio guy in Boston, he travels with the team, he said I got into an altercation on the bus. That's a total lie. I never got into an altercation on the bus. I just wanted to clear up that (...) I was made to look like the bad guy, and that's not how I wanted my career to end.

Basketball Insiders

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Bogans spent 2014-15 out of basketball and was unsatisfied with the circumstances of his departure. Now that he’s back, he offered his explanation of his unceremonious exit from Boston. Rumors surfaced that Bogans got into an argument with coach Brad Stevens on a Celtics team bus. He and the organization said that never occurred. “That was totally made up. I read that story and that was a lie,” said Bogans, who has played 11 NBA seasons with eight teams. “Everything I read in the paper was a lie. I never talked to you guys. So for you all to speculate and say I blew up on the bus, I felt bad about that because that was all lies and that made me look bad with the rest of the NBA community.”

Boston Globe


Bogans said he was called to the office of president of basketball operations Danny Ainge and told to leave the team. Team insiders said the decision was mutual, that Bogans wasn’t a positive influence, and the team wanted a more positive environment for the younger players. “To be honest with you, I don’t know what happened,” he said. “I was there and then I was gone. I don’t want to get into all that. He gave me a leave of absence and I never returned to Boston and that’s the first time something like that has ever happened in my career.”

Boston Globe


Bogans said his reputation was damaged. “Of course, for a guy who’s been around the league as long as I have, I’ve stuck on every team I went to, I’ve never had a confrontation, don’t get in trouble, and to go to a young team and you ask me to go home, that looks bad on my résumé,” he said. “It looked like I didn’t want to be there where the whole time all I wanted to do was help. Of course that makes me mad. The way it ended, that’s not me and I can’t let my career end that way.” Ainge wouldn’t comment. “I talked to everybody,” Bogans said of the Celtics’ brass. “I shook Danny’s hand. I shook Brad’s hand at the [summer league] hotel. It’s nothing personal. People always ask me if I’m mad. Why am I going to be mad at those guys? It’s a business. If we get mad about business, then everybody in this gym would be fighting by now. I’m not mad at those guys.”

Boston Globe

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