Why I like Andrea Bargnani- An alternative perspective

[ishoy123]

Hi all,

As many of you will undoubtedly check, yes, this is my first post ever. I've lurked on this forum for a few years now, but I generally prefer not to get involved in discussions. The reason why I've decided to join now, is purely because I submitted an article to BleacherReport on an alternative view of Andrea Bargnani, but got rejected. I think it is something that true Raptors fans would be interested in, and please enjoy.

(All statistics are presented as of 12/05/12)

With a dismal record of 4-14, everyone, fans and sportswriters alike, agrees that something needs to change with the Toronto Raptors. Much of the ire has to do with Andrea Bargnani, who seems to be almost universally loathed by the basketball community in Toronto. The muttering is usually focused on poor defence, abysmal rebounding, inefficient shooting, and fading away in the clutch. I took it upon myself to research the numbers and stats, and see whether Bargnani is actually as bad as everyone says. The results certainly surprised me, and in my opinion, clearly prove that Bargnani is certainly not the primary reason for this team’s struggles, and is actually the most valuable player on the Raptors.

When people talk about Bargnani’s stats, they usually start with his PER of 13.49, and compare it to Ed Davis’s PER of 19.71, Kyle Lowry’s 22.37, and conclude that Bargnani is obviously a terrible player and should not start or even be playing at all. What PER is good at is providing a measurement of a player’s individual statistics and performance. What it does not do effectively, however, is measure a player’s value within a team setting, or the so-called intangibles. A good measure of these is the +/- per 48 minutes, which is not as good for individual performances, but effectively measures a player’s overall impact in the team, given that the sample size is sufficiently large.

With this in mind, using NBA.com’s StatsCube, the Toronto Raptors are clearly a better team in almost every aspect when Andrea Bargnani is on the court. From a raw +/- per 48 minutes perspective, the Raptors average -3.1 when Bargnani is playing, versus -7.9 when he is sitting. Yes, I realize that the numbers are still negative, but this makes sense, since the Raptors are a losing team so far in the season. By breaking this down, when Bargnani is on the bench, the team plays slightly better defense (+3 pts/100 possessions), but suffers significantly offensively (almost -7 pts/100 possessions) In terms of raw offense, the Raptors shoot significantly better (44.2% vs 40.1%), get more assists (21.4 vs 18), and turn the ball over less (12.5 TOs vs. 14.3). Steals and FT% are virtually unchanged. The only areas where the team regresses are in blocks (4.2 blks vs 5.6) and offensive rebounding (9.7 reb vs 12.4), while the team surprisingly averages more total rebounds with Bargnani on the court (29.4 reb vs. 28), which of course implies an increase in defensive rebounding production.

In my view, the reason why the Raptors are so much better when Bargnani is playing is because of his offensive talent, and his shooting ability which significantly opens up the court for the rest of the team. Opposing teams recognize that Bargnani cannot be left along, and as a result, their help defence weakens. The value of this is clearly demonstrated by the +/- and fg% of his teammates (the better figure highlighted in green) at this link: http://i45.tinypic.com/4g5j47.jpg

Now, the results are perhaps not entirely statistically significant, and there are some flaws with the use of the +/- statistic, but it’s easy to see that the numbers are almost unanimously in favour of Bargnani. In particular, Amir Johnson is a completely different player, shooting 72% with Bargnani playing. The only player who performs worse is Ed Davis, who interestingly enough has a higher PER than Bargnani (and who many people think should start over Bargnani) but actually contribute more to the team when sitting on the bench with per 48 min +/- of -7.2 on the court, and 0.3 when on the bench.

Please understand that I am not saying that Bargnani is a superstar that can lead the Raptors to an NBA championship, as many of the league’s true superstars have much higher +/- differentials on and off the court (The Miami Heat have a +14 differential when Lebron James plays). I also believe that Bargnani has regressed quite significantly from last year, and I am as upset as anyone over his lack of effort at times. His clutch statistics in particular are terrible, but no more worse than any other Raptor, especially Lowry who has a tendency to chuck (18.9 fga vs 14.3 fga) in clutch scenarios at a paltry 27%.

What these numbers do say, however, is that Bargnani is a positive contributor for the Raptors, regardless of his personal stats. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for some other popular Raptors, such as Valanciunas and Lowry as demonstrated in the following chart at this link: http://i50.tinypic.com/11h82vd.

These numbers also demonstrates that Casey’s decision to play Bargnani over Davis is the correct decision and is founded on statistics, rather than because he is “forced to” by Colangelo. What particularly astounds me is that professional sportswriters seem to have been unaware of these statistics (http://www.tsn.ca/blogs/tim_chisholm/?id=409482), and demand Bargnani's trade.

As a last comment, I’ll add a word of comfort for the Bargnani haters. If Bargnani continues to regress offensively, astute teams will notice this, and the advantage of Bargnani spreading the floor will eventually be lost, as defences focus on more skilled scorers. In this scenario, he will truly be useless (and virtually untradeable).

Thanks for reading, and I welcome any comments and suggestions.

[TM85]

Did not read.

Bargnani can GTFO

[TM85]

Did not read.

Bargnani can GTFO

[Dr Positivity]

Bargnani makes this team better, we simply have too little offensive talent for that to not be true. With little going on at SG, SF and C combined offensively, we need a guy who scores points and spaces the floor.

With that said, his best comparison is probably the PF version of Al Harrington, a guy who could get you 20 point nights with unique floor spacing and is best suited as 6th man. Harrington makes teams better, but you don't want to be paying him 10 mil a year and with Bargs being the #1 pick who embodies the given, not earned mentality of the BC era and our failure the last half decade, frankly it is time to move on, even if the only thing we get back is Jeff Green, Wilson Chandler or Emeka Okafor

[highness]

Bargnani makes this team better, we simply have too little offensive talent for that to not be true. With little going on at SG, SF and C combined offensively, we need a guy who scores points and spaces the floor.

With that said, his best comparison is probably the PF version of Al Harrington, a guy who could get you 20 point nights with unique floor spacing and is best suited as 6th man. Harrington makes teams better, but you don't want to be paying him 10 mil a year and with Bargs being the #1 pick who embodies the given, not earned mentality of the BC era and our failure the last half decade, frankly it is time to move on, even if the only thing we get back is Jeff Green, Wilson Chandler or Emeka Okafor

Little going on at SG offensively? DD is our leading scorer

[fredericklove]

This is why he's better suited coming off the bench for us.

[ThatWay]

I stopped reading at "Why I like Andrea Bargnani".

[Kabookalu]

Good effort OP, although I imagine the majority of responses would be similar to something like this:



Although I would say that with how he's playing, he does provide a positive factor to this team, but that's only for this team. A team structured around his importance is not going to be a good one. I was hoping, like everyone else on this board besides a select few, that he finally started playing closer to his potential with his I guess "break out" last season, because that version of Bargnani was actually a winning player, but well he shot all of our hearts down.

[andrej perboski]

Bargnani makes this team better, we simply have too little offensive talent for that to not be true. With little going on at SG, SF and C combined offensively, we need a guy who scores points and spaces the floor.

With that said, his best comparison is probably the PF version of Al Harrington, a guy who could get you 20 point nights with unique floor spacing and is best suited as 6th man. Harrington makes teams better, but you don't want to be paying him 10 mil a year and with Bargs being the #1 pick who embodies the given, not earned mentality of the BC era and our failure the last half decade, frankly it is time to move on, even if the only thing we get back is Jeff Green, Wilson Chandler or Emeka Okafor

Little going on at SG offensively? DD is our leading scorer

Do you know who scored more points in NO last season?
Belinelli

Bye Highness

[KingAmmar]

If you want to use +/- as the basis for argument, please post the +/- of his career, instead of a tiny sample size. Lets try this again.

[fatal9]

I wasn't aware that basketball is only played on one side of the floor.


edit: even if you want to take an offense only approach, whatever positive impact he brings with his "spacing" is somewhat taken away by the fact that he is an inefficient scorer who takes terrible shots. if a guy is starting on your team for the exclusive purpose of scoring/offense, he HAS to be reliable and consistent, Bargnani has never been that.

[Truthrising]

Good effort OP, although I imagine the majority of responses would be similar to something like this:



Although I would say that with how he's playing, he does provide a positive factor to this team, but that's only for this team. A team structured around his importance is not going to be a good one. I was hoping, like everyone else on this board besides a select few, that he finally started playing closer to his potential with his I guess "break out" last season, because that version of Bargnani was actually a winning player, but well he shot all of our hearts down.

That 13 game Bargnani was just mirage, he's pretty much let me and all Raptors fans down and I think it's time for him to gtfo this team. It's better for him and us as an organization.

[DJ KHALED]

Bargs is a very, very good player and we are lucky to have him. No idea why he gets so much hate. He's one of the top offensive big men in the league, period. Big whoop, his defense and rebounding is not the best, well he's just on the opposite end of the spectrum to players like howard and ibaka who have 0 offense but elite defense, and they are valued by fans across the league.

bargs just needs the correct pieces around him, he is a top 20 talent in the league

[Kabookalu]

That 13 game Bargnani was just mirage, he's pretty much let me and all Raptors fans down and I think it's time for him to gtfo this team. It's better for him and us as an organization.

I don't think it was a fluke. His advanced stats those games were significantly better all across the board compared to his career. Some players go through hot shooting streaks, but their advanced stats see little consequence. However Bargnani really was a different player.

He's literally the Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde of the basketball world.

[Raps in 4]

Welcome to the forums, Bryan.

[JN]

I applaud the OP for his attempt at a reasoned approach.

The problem with +/- is it can be easily skewed over smaller sample sizes. If you were to look at the +/- over his career, you will see that this statistic has consistently showed Bargnani to be negative.

This statistic (and other advanced metrics) have not been positive for Bargs for his entire career.

The spacing point has some validity. But my view is as follows -- if you take any high usage player out of your lineup its going to typically have a short term impact. The team has to readjust. But over the long term the usage can re-adjust and the impact would be minimalized.

As for this year Bargnani is not solely responsible for this.... many players are. Its just that BC, Jose, and Bargnani have been here so long they are going to get the majority of the frustration. Add in that Bargnani is lazy, and it will draw ire (irrelevant of production compared to others)

[Alfred]

Bargnani makes this team better, we simply have too little offensive talent for that to not be true. With little going on at SG, SF and C combined offensively, we need a guy who scores points and spaces the floor.

With that said, his best comparison is probably the PF version of Al Harrington, a guy who could get you 20 point nights with unique floor spacing and is best suited as 6th man. Harrington makes teams better, but you don't want to be paying him 10 mil a year and with Bargs being the #1 pick who embodies the given, not earned mentality of the BC era and our failure the last half decade, frankly it is time to move on, even if the only thing we get back is Jeff Green, Wilson Chandler or Emeka Okafor

Little going on at SG offensively? DD is our leading scorer

Do you know who scored more points in NO last season?
Belinelli

Bye Highness

Belinelli didn't score more points per game than DeRozan last season. He scored 11 points per game, DeRozan is averaging 18.4

Are you Appel?

[West Rouge]

Glads you like him. He's not going anywhere & either is this team

[elmer_yuck]

Bargs is a very, very good player and we are lucky to have him. No idea why he gets so much hate. He's one of the top offensive big men in the league, period. Big whoop, his defense and rebounding is not the best, well he's just on the opposite end of the spectrum to players like howard and ibaka who have 0 offense but elite defense, and they are valued by fans across the league.

bargs just needs the correct pieces around him, he is a top 20 talent in the league

I think you really meant to say:

Bargs is a very, very bad player and we are unlucky to have him. No idea why he gets so much love. He's one of the worst big men in the league, period. His defense and rebounding are bad, and he's on the opposite end of the spectrum to players like howard and ibaka who are valued by fans across the league.

bargs just needs to be traded or amnestied, he is a bottom 20 talent in the league.

[-InFeRnO-]

bargs needs to go

the sooner the better