Volcano wrote:WRONG.
Most of his ideas were terrible in theory. The reason you agree with him is because your sense of logic is skewed like his. That's why both of you had to concede to the downfall of Bargs even though everyone else saw it coming a mile away.
That's a pretty harsh comment towards a poster who's got a pretty good understanding of the game, and I'm going to challenge you on that.
This team built around Bargnani was never bad in theory; it was bad
in practice simply because Bargnani has massively underperformed. If he were effective at the things he was supposed to be effective at, we would not be having this conversation. He's an agile big man with great balance and good shooting form and ballhandling skills who, for reason(s) known only to God Himself, cannot shoot accurately from the floor, rebound offensively against much smaller players, outrun anybody in transition, get to the line or - stunningly - pass the damned ball to save his life.
There is no way that in a theoretical world that if you took the structure of a player like Bargnani that you would end up with a model of a player who can't shoot reliably or pass the ball accurately. To say that result is counter-intuitive is a massive understatement.
Has it been obvious from his third year that he wasn't going to pan out the way Colangelo had hoped? Yes, quite frankly, it has. Has the team invested more hope for a longer time in him than they should have? Yes. But that's not a theoretical failure; it's a pragmatic one. Had Bargnani performed at the level he should have, being an effective perimeter shooter and passer who forces opposing bigs to expend a lot of energy to sprint back in transition instead of rebounding offensively or forcing them to get caught on mismatches with smaller players on the perimeter, then Bargnani looks just dandy. It's just that he hasn't performed up to the level he could have. And, frankly, for that to have worked well he needed some help on the wing, and the type of wing player Bargnani needed as a compliment is so rare that you really can't base your hopes on landing one - thinking of a Shawn Marion in his prime, obviously.
The GM should not be allowed to have a SINGLE decision that's horrible in theory. This is his job. If he does something that's obviously mindnumbingly stupid to everyone involved in the game, then he doesn't deserve to keep his job.
I'm curious to what exactly is the theoretical failure, here.
Miami is now running a 5-out/0-in offense, which usually you see coaches at underpopulated high schools with no football programs use. Is that a failure? Obviously not; nobody can guard it.
Could the Raptors have made that work? If Bargnani were as good as he could have been, absolutely. Had other pieces worked out, sure. But those aren't theoretical problems, really; they're just pragmatic concerns.
Colangelo should still be fired, because obviously he cannot circumnavigate the mundane matters of NBA personnel management effectively. But there was nothing wrong with the theory of what he's done; he just hasn't assembled the right players to make it happen.
