Uncle Hare wrote:-= original quote snipped =-
You'll never know 'till you try. I've been watching Bargnani for 4 years, and I assure you that he has an incredible capacity to improve, associated to playing time. Formerly he was a nice shooter with a lot of quickness for his size; in two years he become a also a very good defender, a decent rebounder and a great clutch player.
He's a mediocre rebounder who doesn't seem to be particularly good inside the arc. He's a decent man defender, which is nice, but he's really not a star player. More to the point, he doesn't serve any of the major needs we have.
We HAVE outside shooting... we need excellent rebounding, which Bargs will never provide, and a slasher from the 2/3 spots, and Bargs is a 4/5. So he really doesn't fit the mould of what we need as a team and is, consequently, more of a waste of time than anything else even if he ultimately pans out as a starting-caliber player.
I really can't see why he couldn't become a post player. He has the size, he has the touch, he has the coordination, he surely has the will to become a better player. But he can't become a post player if no one teach him how to do it during training, or if he never get the ball in the paint when he's in the post.
Generally speaking, if you're not playing in the post for most of your basketball life, you're not going to be a good post player. You'll be an acceptable one. The guys who can develop later are almost exclusively uber-athletes and they rely on athleticism early until they learn the game down low after like 6+ years. Bargs is not terrifically athletic; he's not a stiff but in the post, he lacks the fluidity, the footwork, the general comfort level you build playing their on a regular basis, etc. And more importantly, you SHOULDN'T make a guy like Bargs a post player because he's already got a clear skill: three-point shooting. You build around that by supplementing with face-up and post skills.
You don't force him to try and learn how to play down low.
When do you recall the last time a project of that nature actually succeeded?
Maybe he'll never become a great rebounder, but he can become an oustanding offensive superstar and a good defender. It's not what you need? Well, it's a better trade material a useless superstar than an anonymous bench player, isn't it?
That's really an irrelevant question, because Bargs even now can be used in a trade. Also, Bargs is not likely to become a superstar and even if he were to eventually develop that well (which is especially unlikely given his regression), it won't be for several years and at that point, we'll have wasted too much time.
And again, you're still ignoring the fact that no matter how Bargs develops, it won't be into what we need. That means if we decide to wait for his potential development, we're wasting time when we could be moving him and waiting for another project player to develop into something that's actually valuable to us. It has an equal prospect of success as does waiting for Bargs and hopefully flipping him for what we need.
) a 20 mpg nba player... you can't never tell...
