sanity wrote:Bargnani's play is always deceiving. Deceivingly terrible, because shooting 30 some odd percent and not commanding double teams eliminates the idea that he spaces the floor or contributes anything positive on offense anyways
Even without double teams Bargnani DOES space the floor. Here's the issue however, his shooting ability creates better floor spacing versus traditional half court lineups (Spurs, Memphis, etc). We're seeing less of these lineups today. More particularly, look at our most recent matchups and you'll see that he's been covered for stretches by the likes of Gerald Wallace, Thaddeus Young, Paul Millsap (who can play SF), Paul George, and others. The days of Bargnani shooting jumpshots on a big man who doesn't want to go out there are over, as soon as Indiana noticed he's making a run on David West, they quickly switch a new defender on him and his hot streak is over.
Not only is Bargnani's conditioning an issue at the end of games, but he has to make it a point to post up when they switch smaller defenders on him. This is where Bargnani was a matchup nightmare last year, because he recognized that every time he had a small defender he could bully them in the post, and once they switched a big he could take them back outside and stretch the D. Bargs has shied away from that this year (I only saw him go strictly to a post up game in one game this year when they put a smaller defender on him). If he can't punish teams for putting out small lineups, then he's practically useless out there. Teams are taking away Bargs blow by ability on bigs and relegating him to become an inefficient long 2 jumpshooter (since quicker defenders are better at recovering to the 3 point line against him and forcing him off the 3).
Casey's adjustment when opposing teams present us with a smaller lineup should be to put Bargs at Center and run a small lineup while still allowing Bargs to maintain an advantage over the other team's Center.
