Reasons to Keep Bargnani

[LodzBaluty]

I understand what you are saying, but I think you are over estimating the impact. Andrea gets a lot of minutes, and often plays with the better bench players himself.

The numbers quoted only take out Andrea, so the rest of "the bad starters" are still in the game.

So the comparison is with "bad starters" with Andrea, and "bad starters" without Andrea.

You're still missing his point though, "bad starters" without Andrea don't necessarily still play against the other team's starting lineup; they play a mix of starters and bench players. Andrea the majority of the time plays against starting lineups. A better comparison would be stats where Andrea didn't play at all.

So what you are saying is that our "bad starters" can't even out play the subpar bench that is tossed agaisnt them?

Sorry if I am confused, even the explanation, seems to point to Andrea not being that good.

[DG88]

imo, andrea bargnani has become toronto's shareef abdur-rahim. he's the butt of the joke, but he'll keep scoring just to give his apologists some ammunition. next thing you know, he'll retire- and raptor fans will stay waiting for his development. i don't know if there's a player on earth who's worth this kind of pain.

for me, his greatest weakness continues to be his transition defense. he's just soooooo LA-ZY, i don't know if i'm even surprised. can you really expect this guy to run hard if nobody demands it from him? his lethargic jog... ugh... resulting in a dunk the other way. UGH. lather rinse repeat. UGGGGGHHHHH!!!

saw it last night on consecutive possessions with nene. like, how many times do you need to get burned before you clue in, andrea? always behind the play, always a step slow? do you really need someone to tell you that that's not helping the team? it's unbelievable.

mind you, he does run the floor hard on offense from time to time. i saw him rip it like frankie fredericks last week versus detroit when bayless was leading the break. but then returned to his ol' lazy self when the ball came back the other way.

so lazy. unbelievable. i don't have a hate on for any raptor, ever, but i'm embarrassed by how bargnani gets away with murder over and again. i want to get rid of him just so i don't have to watch this double-standard/special treatment anymore. i'm sure i'm not alone.

but i must be a hater.

peace

It's his defensive awareness that is terrible. Have you seen him defend the pick and roll? He's atrocious at it. It's almost a score every time it's used against us.

[DreamTeam09]

No bud, ya'all wanna act like 22 & 5 on 45% is horrible/can't win with, what ya'all want is like 22 & 8+ 1blk on 50% right... Well if he was doing those #s, he'd be top 10 arguably. Because he isn't putting up top 10 stats in his 7th yr on a team thats tanking makes him crap, gimmie a break. Ya'all want too much.

Bud, just so' u' no, I don't care about his stats. Never have. I don't care about anyones's stats. All I care about is W's. If Andrea can brign us some of those and score 12 and 6 I am as happy as big in ****.

Me2, but its not his fault entierly why we haven't won more games then we have this yr.... So why is he the source to everyones problems with this team...

[Double Helix]

The league-wide average includes names like Steve Novak, (TS% of .784), Jeremy Evans (.700) and plenty more. Those big numbers have dramatic impacts on the overall league average. What you'd want to do is get the average TS% of players taking at least 10 or more FGAs and see where Bargnani ranks in comparison. That's more reflective of his peer group.

Heh, they register almost no impact at all. Again, I'm not averaging the few hundred players, I'm averaging the 170,000 field goal attempts and 50,000 free throw attempts taken in the league this season. Steve Novak's 49 FGA wouldn't move it even a thousandth of a percent.

I only brought up age to indicate that over the length of his contract, barring serious injury, he'll probably always be a productive offensive weapon because his contract runs until he's 29-30.

But he's not really a productive offensive weapon now.

I brought up the slight % difference to showcase just how tight it is in that middle of the pack. I agree 15th out of 21 isn't good when it's his best attribute but it is interesting to see some of the other names in his range for frame of reference.

Indeed, and a good many of the names in his range are inveterate chuckers or guys who do far more on the floor. Rose and Westbrook are the latter; Randolph, Ellis and Beasley the former.

Are you sure the league average often found on sites is truly the league average as far as total attemps/makes and not just an average of the averages? Is there any way to find out because I've been curious about this for a while now. It should be calculated the way you're describing but I have my doubts. Even still, using the preferred/proper calculation, it's still seems irrelevant to pool all the data of the hundreds of low volume scorers in the NBA, combine those percentages, and then compare it to the kinds of players who are taking 15 or more shots per game. The only truly reflective thing to do is to compare within the peer group.

[Kabookalu]

So what you are saying is that our "bad starters" can't even out play the subpar bench?

Sorry if I am confused, even the explanation, seems to point to that Andrea is just not that good.

Look, over the years we've compiled teams where our bench players are almost as good as our starting lineup. This mostly doesn't apply to other teams, they usually have mediocre to bad benches with maybe just 1 or 2 decent rotation players. Our starting lineups the majority of the time lose the battle, but come the 2nd quarter our bench players usually outplay the other team's bench skewing the statistics a bit. I wasn't defending Andrea because I already said that I'm disappointed he isn't doing much to distinguish himself from our bench players, I was clearing up the argument because you kept on missing DH's point.

[Double Helix]

I know how it works and I'm assuming he got his data from 82 games. My critique was with this knowledge in mind. Think about it. The data being collected without Andrea includes moments where he and many other starters are out and the bench is in playing against another team's bench and lighting them up. As I said before, Colangelo's always assembled strong benches that compete with our starters and as a result much of the starting +/- data looks a little funny. In other words, starters on the Raptors are regularly out performed as a team by other starting lineups but our bench which doesn't feature Bargnani and some other starters (like Calderon) does not because Colangelo's always been better at building competitive benches than starting lineups so our bench outperforms many benches and our starters do not.

I hope this makes more sense.

I understand what you are saying, but I think you are over estimating the impact. Andrea gets a lot of minutes, and often plays with the better bench players himself.

The numbers quoted only take out Andrea, so the rest of "the bad starters" are still in the game.

So the comparison is with "bad starters" with Andrea, and "bad starters" without Andrea.

That's not the case at all actually. The data is simply any minutes involving the Raptors where Andrea isn't playing so this includes hundreds of hours of data where he and many of the other starters are on the bench and our team's bench is going up against the other team's bench. The data does not just include the starters minus Andrea vs other starters. It's nowhere near as cut and dry as that.

[Double Helix]

On the averaging thing, to explain it a different way...

What you think I'm doing:

Player A takes 4 shots and makes all 4, for a 100% shooting percentage.
Player B takes 1000 shots and makes 500, for a 50% shooting percentage.

Thus, the average of the two is 75%.


What I'm actually doing:


Player A takes 4 shots and makes all 4, for a 100% shooting percentage.
Player B takes 1000 shots and makes 500, for a 50% shooting percentage.

Thus, the average of the two is 50.2%, or 504/1004.

You actually addressed this as I was typing a similar question. This is what I had hoped was going on but I wasn't sure that you were calculating this manually somehow. Are you calculating this manually? I get most of my league average stuff from hoopdata and unfortunately I can't determine how they're building that league average. I'm assuming it's being calculated properly but with everything being so sorted and colum-based... I sort of have my doubts.

[LodzBaluty]

Look, over the years we've compiled teams where our bench players are almost as good as our starting lineup. This mostly doesn't apply to other teams, they usually have mediocre to bad benches with maybe just 1 or 2 decent rotation players. Our starting lineups the majority of the time lose the battle, but come the 2nd quarter our bench players usually outplay the other team's bench skewing the statistics a bit. I wasn't defending Andrea because I already said that I'm disappointed he isn't doing much to distinguish himself from our bench players, I was clearing up the argument because you kept on missing DH's point.

I get it, I know what you guys are trying to say, but I still think its a little misleading and deflective.


The way to solve this would be do compile the same numbers for all starters.


You would need to do this for:

Jose
Amir
Evans
Weems


These guys should show the same reflection if the above is as you say. Anyone feel like doing it?

[Schad]

You actually addressed this as I was typing a similar question. This is what I had hoped was going on but I wasn't sure that you were calculating this manually somehow. Are you calculating this manually? I get most of my league average stuff from hoopdata and unfortunately I can't determine how they're building that league average. I'm assuming it's being calculated properly but with everything being so sorted and colum-based... I sort of have my doubts.

Basketball Reference gives the team-by-team averages for all counting stats; from there it's simply a matter of multiplying the number by 30 and plugging it into the TS% formula. There might be rounding error, but it would be less than 0.009% on FGA and 0.03% on FTA. Not those values by TS%, either; in absolute terms, so +/- 15 FTA/FGA out of a pool of 170,000 and 50,000.

[Tony_Montana]

That's not the case at all actually. The data is simply any minutes involving the Raptors where Andrea isn't playing so this includes hundreds of hours of data where he and many of the other starters are on the bench and our team's bench is going up against the other team's bench. The data does not just include the starters minus Andrea vs other starters. It's nowhere near as cut and dry as that.

It's been the case for the past 5 years. Every single year it's shown that we're a better defensive squad and a better overall squad with Bargnani on the bench. Every. Freakin. Year. What's wrong with you people? Never has an average player warranted so much discussion.

[Tony_Montana]

Look, over the years we've compiled teams where our bench players are almost as good as our starting lineup. This mostly doesn't apply to other teams, they usually have mediocre to bad benches with maybe just 1 or 2 decent rotation players. Our starting lineups the majority of the time lose the battle, but come the 2nd quarter our bench players usually outplay the other team's bench skewing the statistics a bit. I wasn't defending Andrea because I already said that I'm disappointed he isn't doing much to distinguish himself from our bench players, I was clearing up the argument because you kept on missing DH's point.

Bull. All our good starters had a measurable positive impact on the game. Especially Bosh.

[Kabookalu]

That's not the case at all actually. The data is simply any minutes involving the Raptors where Andrea isn't playing so this includes hundreds of hours of data where he and many of the other starters are on the bench and our team's bench is going up against the other team's bench. The data does not just include the starters minus Andrea vs other starters. It's nowhere near as cut and dry as that.

It's been the case for the past 5 years. Every single year it's shown that we're a better defensive squad and a better overall squad with Bargnani on the bench. Every. Freakin. Year. What's wrong with you people? Never has an average player warranted so much discussion.

And every single year since we've drafted Bargnani we've always had evenly spread out talent down to the 10th man. Remember Calderon vs. Ford? Humphries was our main big bench player. Rasho his time with us was playing like a slightly worse version of Big Z (when Z was still effective). Mo Pete, Delfino, Parker, Moon, Garbo, our teams have always been cluttered with average talent. Again I'd like to reiterate I'm not defending Bargnani; if you were truly a great player you would stand out amongst the rest, but DH does bring up a really good argument.

[LodzBaluty]

That's not the case at all actually. The data is simply any minutes involving the Raptors where Andrea isn't playing so this includes hundreds of hours of data where he and many of the other starters are on the bench and our team's bench is going up against the other team's bench. The data does not just include the starters minus Andrea vs other starters. It's nowhere near as cut and dry as that.

DH,

I already gave the solution. Just do the same comparison for the other 4 starters and see if they show the same defficency. If they do... than your theory is correct, if on the other hand their numbers look better than Andrea's than he is the one dragging ass.

[Kabookalu]

Bull. All our good starters had a measurable positive impact on the game. Especially Bosh.

You took my point way too literal.

[Tony_Montana]

And every single year since we've drafted Bargnani we've always had evenly spread out talent down to the 10th man. Remember Calderon vs. Ford? Humphries was our main big bench player. Rasho his time with us was playing like a slightly worse version of Big Z (when Z was still effective). Mo Pete, Delfino, Parker, Moon, Garbo, our teams have always been cluttered with average talent. Again I'd like to reiterate I'm not defending Bargnani; if you were truly a great player you would stand out amongst the rest, but DH does bring up a really good argument.

Calderon, Ford, Hump, Raso, Parker, Moon, Garbo ALL HAD A POSITIVE IMPACT ON THE GAME. Bargnani, year in and year out, is a NET NEGATIVE. How hard is this to understand?

[Kabookalu]

Calderon, Ford, Hump, Raso, Parker, Moon, Garbo ALL HAD A POSITIVE IMPACT ON THE GAME. Bargnani, year in and year out, is a NET NEGATIVE. How hard is this to understand?

How hard is it to follow my argument? I said I'm not defending Bargnani, just defending DH's argument.

[JWiLL02]

Continuing to argue in favour of Bargs simply because of his ability to "stretch the D" is laughable.

I only read a couple pages of this thread, but anyone in support of Bargs is likely using this argument. What else is there at this point?

It's a little unfair in the sense that he never should have been a #1 pick, these expectations never should have been placed on him, and he never should have been in a position where he was expected to be a "Franchise Player". I'm a BC supporter, but this Bargnani situation has really tainted his reputation IMO, and the fact is no other GM in the league would have made that selection, not to mention the sequence of events that took place after regarding Bargs. He was so quick in attempting to fix his other mistakes (JO, Kapono, Turk) yet he's never come close to admitting Bargs may have been one, and he never will.

Bah.

I'd like BC to stay with the team, but if bringing someone else in is the only way to move on from the "Bargnani Era" than I'm all for it.

[Kabookalu]

Continuing to argue in favour of Bargs simply because of his ability to "stretch the D" is laughable.

I only read a couple pages of this thread, but anyone in support of Bargs is likely using this argument. What else is there at this point?

It's a little unfair in the sense that he never should have been a #1 pick, these expectations never should have been placed on him, and he never should have been in a position where he was expected to be a "Franchise Player". I'm a BC supporter, but this Bargnani situation has really tainted his reputation IMO, and the fact is no other GM in the league would have made that selection, not to mention the sequence of events that took place after regarding Bargs. He was so quick in attempting to fix his other mistakes (JO, Kapono, Turk) yet he's never come close to admitting Bargs may have been one, and he never will.

Bah.

I'd like BC to stay with the team, but if bringing someone else in is the only way to move on from the "Bargnani Era" than I'm all for it.

Like I've always said before, what indication do people have where BC will always stick up for Bargnani no matter what? It's funny that people think BC is still "favouring" Calderon even though he was a cockblock away from trading him away. Let's imagine that Calderon didn't even come close to being traded away for Chandler because there were no trades for him, the perception would be that BC is "coddling" Calderon. BC doesn't show his cards because that's what good businessmen do. To openly say that "Bargnani isn't what I expected him to be" would destroy any leverage he has in a trade involving Bargnani. Do you think we would have been able to trade away Turk for Barbosa if BC said "Signing Turkoglu was a mistake"?

[Double Helix]

And every single year since we've drafted Bargnani we've always had evenly spread out talent down to the 10th man. Remember Calderon vs. Ford? Humphries was our main big bench player. Rasho his time with us was playing like a slightly worse version of Big Z (when Z was still effective). Mo Pete, Delfino, Parker, Moon, Garbo, our teams have always been cluttered with average talent. Again I'd like to reiterate I'm not defending Bargnani; if you were truly a great player you would stand out amongst the rest, but DH does bring up a really good argument.

Calderon, Ford, Hump, Raso, Parker, Moon, Garbo ALL HAD A POSITIVE IMPACT ON THE GAME. Bargnani, year in and year out, is a NET NEGATIVE. How hard is this to understand?

That's simply not true.

2009 - Bosh's best year as an NBA player

Hedo - negative 4.2
Jose - negative 0.5
Derozan - negative 7.3

Hell, even Chris Bosh... despite being one of the most statistically impressive players of last season was only a + 6.0 with this sad sack team of starters.

If you compare that 6.0 with other starters on teams that had weak benches and better starting units overall you'll see that Bosh's +6.0 despite being one of the best players statistically in the NBA last year isn't particularly impressive. The Raptors starters have sucked for a long time in comparison to other starters. Bosh was far and away the team's best starter by a mile last year and even his contributions were minimized but how good our bench looked/looks against many other benches.

Bargnani isn't the same class as player as Bosh. It's not even close and them playing together (Barg's enitre career until this year) did no favors for Bargs because he's similar but worse in practically every way but the Bosh era is over and the expectations shouldn't be the same 'cause Bosh was a borderline franchise player and we've known that Bargnani wasn't for years now.

You take a third banana type and put him in a starting lineup this bad and compare his off minutes with bench players that destroy other benches most nights and of course he's going to look bad. This entire starting lineup needs massive improvement. We need big upgrades in HIGH END QUALITY not MIDDLE RANGE QUANTITY.

[DreamTeam09]

WTF, BARGNANI ERA, THIS IS HIS 1ST YR W/O CHRIS BOSH. NO1 HAS CLAIMED THIS TO BE THE BARGS ERA EXCEPT THE PPL THAT DON'T LIKE HIM. OUR GM WHO DRAFTED HIM HAS SAID THIS TEAM HAS NO FRANCHISE TAG PLAYER CURRENTLY.....