Problem: Bargnani is a Volume Shooter, Sam Not Giving PT

[MacDaddy]

The Blazers announcers (as crappy as they were) said it best: Bargnani is a volume shooter. It's so true. He's such a streaky player that he needs 15-20 shots to really display his game and have enough shots to get into a rhythm. Right now, Sam's just pulling him if he's not making his first 5-10 shots - but the thing with Bargnani is he hits and misses in runs. How many times have we seen him start games badly only to come back strong - but only if Sam leaves him in the game.

The problem with Bargnani being a volume shooter is that, with Bosh and the others, Bargnani just won't be getting enough touches to be an effective player. I think it's going to be a continuous problem for this team and BC will have to figure out something sooner or later.

Bargnani won't consistently play well unless you give him at least 10 (and preferably 15-20) shots. Period.

If the Raps are unwilling to do that, it's time to think about what to do.

Seriously, this guy was a first overall pick. Don't destroy his career or the Raps by not giving him enough PT early on. If he's not going to fit here, figure out something so he doesn't waste away. God knows that Darko would be a much better player today if he didn't go to a stacked team early on in his career. Just ask Joe Dumars (really).

He's a volume shooter, just not a volume shot-maker.

[WD-40]

wtf lay off of bargs...let him develop..no one is talking about his aggressive start..elts all bash bargs...yes pitch forks and all..**** ashamed to be a raps fan....seriously **** disappointed...that these are my fellow fans...**** seriously...

[miruss2001]

I think there is a balance to be struck. Those who denfend him need to recognize he has done very little to prove himself worthy of the first pick, let alone be a consistent contributor to the team. Those who bash him need to recognize that there is potential there that might one day be realized.

The constant is that he's been disapointing to all.

[ldnk]

There needs to be some action on these boards to clean up some of the spam with the Bargnani/bust comments. They are there to do nothing other than incite arguments (the very definition of trolling) and essentially never provide any actual analysis. Furthering on that, it is often the same posters, uttering the same comment in each thread, often multiple times, regardless of the OP topic.

As for Bargnani as a volume shooter. I don't buy that logic. He wasn't struggling with his shot last year when he wasn't getting shots. He was shooting a similar percentage earlier in the year when he was averaging 8 points as to when he started to take 15 shots in a game and hit 20 points. Right now his shot just isn't going down. I would attribute it partially to his attempts to develop an interior game. He makes a lot of effort to go inside attempting to post up his man. Right now he isn't very good at it and so it works for a bit, or it doesn't, but for the most part, he doesn't get the ball very much on the inside. As he is a more comfortable perimeter shooter, he is moving away from those comfort areas when he is trying to get closer to the rim.

[user name]

Andrea was touted as a pure shooter- a guy with a sweet stroke- he should not therefore have to be a volume shooter. Look at Kapono- he averages less than 3 3-point attempts per game but still manages to make 50% of them. Scorers- not shooters- need volumes of shots- AB was supposed to be a shooter.

[The_Hater]

This volume shooter has been shooting close to 30% the last 6 weeks. Among his many other issues, his bad shooting of late has been killing us.

And we want him to shoot... more?

[ScorKreaDagger]

I think he just needs to know that he'll be out there on the court, being allowed to play through a few mistakes, instead of being anxious about getting an early hook from smitch/refs.

I don't know, BC didn't seem to happy even after we won the game, I'm guessing it has to do with Bargs. Either he's not happy with his play, or he's still not happy with how smitch is handling him.

Seriously, the fouls the refs called on him today were all pretty garbage, and he played what, a total of 10-15 minutes today? He deserved more time, IMO.

I only read up to your post and couldn't agree more. I just watched the first 5-6 minutes of the game (taped it) and thought Bargs was doing pretty well. I watched him exclusively at both ends and thought he was doing pretty well on the offensive end. He was it to the rack. On the defensive end he altered some shots and played decent man defense. He did lose his man a couple times, but it was to come out and clog the lane for Roy or another penetrator. The fouls were ticky-tack at best and Sam overreacted. He should have left him in to get his groove a bit since it wasn't costing the team in any serious way (and he was actually contributing IMO). I think Sam's hook is wau too quick and Bargs was clearly as frustrated with the foul calls as he was with being pulled out. It's not like we count on Bargs for 40 minutes and need to save him. Bargs needs consistency in his minutes and be allowed to make errors through his growing pains. I think Bargs is trying to find that equilibrium of being aggressive to please the coaches and also do waht h e is most comfirtable with (the outside shooting). Sam is holding him back.

[Gods Eye]

Seriously Bargnani needs Bosh to set picks for him.

Then he can either shoot or pass it off to Bosh.

[Mr. Perfect]

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I only read up to your post and couldn't agree more. I just watched the first 5-6 minutes of the game (taped it) and thought Bargs was doing pretty well. I watched him exclusively at both ends and thought he was doing pretty well on the offensive end. He was it to the rack. On the defensive end he altered some shots and played decent man defense. He did lose his man a couple times, but it was to come out and clog the lane for Roy or another penetrator. The fouls were ticky-tack at best and Sam overreacted. He should have left him in to get his groove a bit since it wasn't costing the team in any serious way (and he was actually contributing IMO). I think Sam's hook is wau too quick and Bargs was clearly as frustrated with the foul calls as he was with being pulled out. It's not like we count on Bargs for 40 minutes and need to save him. Bargs needs consistency in his minutes and be allowed to make errors through his growing pains. I think Bargs is trying to find that equilibrium of being aggressive to please the coaches and also do waht h e is most comfirtable with (the outside shooting). Sam is holding him back.

So it's Sam's fault that Andrea is not hitting his jumpshots, missing defensive assignments and not rebounding the ball?

Ok, sure. We'll go with that.

[pierrot]

The Blazers announcers (as crappy as they were) said it best: Bargnani is a volume shooter. It's so true. He's such a streaky player that he needs 15-20 shots to really display his game and have enough shots to get into a rhythm.

This is ridiculous. So he doesn't get into a rhythm until he's taken 15-20 shots! First of all, how would you even know this? How many times has he even taken that many shots in his NBA career? Secondly, if he's not going to shoot at a good percentage until after he takes 15 shots, what kind of percentage do you expect him to shoot overall? How many shots will he need to take in order to make up for all the shots that he misses at the beginning of the game?

Thankfully, your suggestion is completely untrue. It is, theoretically, possible to test - just find out if Bargnani shoots at a higher percentage after his first ten (or five, or whatever) number of shots. But that's a lot of work and there's no way either of us will do it. Nevertheless, I am positive that Bargs doesn't shoot better later in the game. Last year there were plenty of games where he shot well right off the bat. In fact, I remember him having some great first quarters and then not doing much afterwards on a number of occasions. Game 5 of the playoffs, for example.

The problem is right now, he's just not shooting well at all. It's easy to fantasize about him suddenly getting "hot" from the field, but until you show me some evidence, I don't buy it.

Of course, on the rare occasions that he does get 20 shots, you can bet he will be shooting a good percentage overall that day. But that's because his teammates are going to try to get him the ball as long as his shots are going in. If he's having a statistically above average shooting night, he'll probably get more shots ... but don't confuse cause and effect.

[Yosemite Dan]

So this the new Bargs' excuse, not enough shots. I guess that can't be any worse than all the old Bargs' excuses namely:

1 He's tired from the summer.
2.He needs 5 years.
3.He's out of position although thinking him at SG makes me shudder.
4.He has a bad knee to go along with his apparently weak heart.
5.His shots just not falling although based on his career FG% anywhere he's played he's actually right on par.
6.He's had the longest case of the flu in recorded history.

The only thing it seems that the word volume has to do with Bargs is the excuses.

[Basketball_Jones]

So this the new Bargs' excuse, not enough shots. I guess that can't be any worse than all the old Bargs' excuses namely:

1 He's tired from the summer.
2.He needs 5 years.
3.He's out of position although thinking him at SG makes me shudder.
4.He has a bad knee to go along with his apparently weak heart.
5.His shots just not falling although based on his career FG% anywhere he's played he's actually right on par.
6.He's had the longest case of the flu in recorded history.

The only thing it seems that the word volume has to do with Bargs is the excuses.

QFT

[Darrick Martin]

So this the new Bargs' excuse, not enough shots. I guess that can't be any worse than all the old Bargs' excuses namely:

1 He's tired from the summer.
2.He needs 5 years.
3.He's out of position although thinking him at SG makes me shudder.
4.He has a bad knee to go along with his apparently weak heart.
5.His shots just not falling although based on his career FG% anywhere he's played he's actually right on par.
6.He's had the longest case of the flu in recorded history.

The only thing it seems that the word volume has to do with Bargs is the excuses.

That pretty much sums it up there and it seems like a lot for a #1 pick 23-year-old 7 foot professional basketball player with several years of professional experience under his belt. Oh yeah, his basketball IQ is off the charts as well, supposedly.

[Darrick Martin]

Seriously Bargnani needs Bosh to set picks for him.

Then he can either shoot or pass it off to Bosh.

Other way around would be better.

[Kabookalu]

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Other way around would be better.

Bargnani actually does set picks for Bosh down low.

[youreachiteach]

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So it's Sam's fault that Andrea is not hitting his jumpshots, missing defensive assignments and not rebounding the ball?

Ok, sure. We'll go with that.

I thought he played more aggressive today, and got jobbed by the officiating. Sam always gives the hook to EVERYBODY with 2 fouls, including Chris Bosh for the half.

He played with passion, took good shots for the most part (outside of one post play where he was trying to draw contact instead of going up strong).

He didn't hit shots, and we're a slow team as it is. Sam is always drawn into going small when we get beat off the bounce, which is why Bargs wasn't getting the time--that and Sam reserves fourth quarter minutes for his best rebounders, which we can all agree Bargs is not.

He went after it today, however, and a little less Brandon Roy Jordan officiating and he gets a nice putback dunk and a few more boards and points.

If he keeps after it and can avoid the ticktack fouls, I think we're getting close to seeing a better Andrea soon. He is, at least, zoned in now, even if it didn't show up in the boxscore.

[Junkball]

I don"t see how you can blame a coach for not giving a mediocre player enough minutes if he is hurting the team. Maybe blame the coach for not setting up the right match-ups, or not giving the player the right combination of reward and punishment. But I certainly don't blame Mitchell for his earn-your-minutes attitude.

I don't think Bargnani is a bust. But we might not see him make significant progress until his contract year. Why do you think BC said wait 5 years? Year 4: contract year Year 5: see if the player regresses after the contract year.

[I_Like_Dirt]

How far the standards have fallen if some people are suggesting that yesterday was a good performance by Andrea and only the refs got in his way. You can count the number of times he passed the basketball on one finger so I suppose he was being more aggressive with shooting except his shot wasn't falling because he was forcing uncomfortable shots. Defensively and on the boards he was even worse than he was on offense and somehow that's a good performance where he got jobbed by the refs who only called legit, fairly obvious fouls on him?

Just for fun, let's test this volume shooter bit. You'd expect him to have more positive performances when he shoots more because he was obviously playing well enough to warrant the minutes to take the shots he did so my standards, at least, are going to rise a bit for these purposes since they represent the very select cream of the crop for Andrea. I'm going to use 13 spg as a cutoff just randomly as a chance to get at least a little data.

Jan. 6 vs. Detroit - 10 of 16 for 25 points and 2/3 FTs with only 2 rebounds 2 fouls and a bunch of zeroes in 40 minutes. A very efficient scoring game with not a whole lot of other contributions but at least it was a rare phenomenal scoring outburst from Bargs in a game where he played passable defense (on the Pistons' bigs, at least).

Dec. 22 vs. Phoenix - 6 of 13 for 13 points and no FTs with 3 boards 1 block 2 turnovers and 1 foul in 30 minutes. Not particularly efficient scoring and very small contributions in every other facet. If any other player put up these numbers for any other team nobody would be impressed.

Dec. 1 vs. Washington - 2 of 13 for 4 points and 0/2 FTs with 2 rebounds 3 assists and 3 fouls in almost 25 minutes. Terrible, but at least this was one of his three games this season with more than 2 assists.

Nov. 30 vs. Cleveland - 9 of 19 for 26 points and 6/8 FTs with 6 boards and 3 assists in 40 minutes. I'd suggest this was Bargnani's best game of the season. His rebounding was still problematic but if he played like this regularly, or even somewhere remotely close, nobody would be seriously complaining.

Nov. 21 vs. Memphis - 5 of 16 for 13 points and 3/4 FTs with 11 boards 4 assists 5 fouls and 2 turnovers in 31 minutes. At least this was one of about 5 games this season where he looked like he didn't deem rebounding beneath him.

Nov. 20 vs. Dallas - 7 of 14 for 20 points and 1/2 FTs with 5 boards in 33 minutes. A pretty solid game and representative of roughly what I think should be reasonable to expect of Bargnani at this stage of his career, although perhaps slightly less efficient on offense as he can't always shoot 9 3s- particularly not and expect to make 5 of them.

Nov. 7 vs. Orlando - 7 of 18 for 16 points and 0/1 FTs with 8 boards 4 fouls and 3 turnovers in 35 minutes. Back when the team was trying to hand him minutes on a platter and he was struggling to perform. Again, at least he looked like rebounding wasn't beneath on this day.

Nov. 4 vs. Boston - 2 of 13 for 9 points and 4/5 FTs with 8 boards in 34 minutes. Again, his rebounding was solid here, but it didn't take long for teams to realize just how easy it was to keep him away from the glass and totally remove his interest in that aspect of the game.

So we have 8 games where Andrea took 13 or more shots. In only 3 of those did he rebound at a particularly impressive rate and two of those were in the first 5 games of the season. Overall, he shot 49/122 for nearly .402 shooting to get his 126 points. Considering this is supposed to represent the cream of the crop for Andrea's performances I don't think there's any evidence at all to suggest, at least this season, that Andrea performs better notably better when he's given more shots and taking a glance at last season's performances I don't think the numbers sway too much in either direction. There is some evidence to suggest that he's given more PT and shots when he plays better in any particular aspect and that he's even given leeway in the game following a good performance no matter how terrible he plays.

[pierrot]

Just for fun, let's test this volume shooter bit...

Considering this is supposed to represent the cream of the crop for Andrea's performances I don't think there's any evidence at all to suggest, at least this season, that Andrea performs better notably better when he's given more shots and taking a glance at last season's performances I don't think the numbers sway too much in either direction.

That was a good use of the available data. Pretty small sample size but it certainly tends to undermine this particular myth. Thanks!