Raptors Digest » Blog Archive » Have Raptor fans had enough of Andrea?

Have Raptor fans had enough of Andrea?

22 June 2010 8 Comments

There is a growing anti-Andrea sentiment among Raptor fans and if Chris Bosh leaves free agency it threatens to spiral out of control.

Andrea Bargnani, rightly or wrongly, is being pointed to as a correlative factor as to why Bosh may be bolting the Raptors.

No one will argue with the fact that the Bosh-Bargnani combo is one of the highest scoring front-court combos in the league, but that is where the positives end. Neither player is good on defense but Bosh can fulfill his typical big man duties such as a being a help defender and rebounding at a high clip, Bargnani can’t.

Ryan Wolstat of the Toronto Sun accentuated the fact that the Bosh-Bargnani combo is one of the worst defensive parings in the league.

“For much of the season, the Raptors were on pace to become the worst defensive team since 1977/78, when a stat called defensive rating which measures points allowed per 100 possessions was first kept.

The Raptors finished the year with a defensive rating of 111.3, not historically bad, but still, the worst in the league by almost three full points.

Most alarmingly, is the aforementioned discrepancy of Bosh playing with the likes of Amir Johnson and Rasho Nesterovic, vs. Bosh with Bargnani.

Toronto’s defensive rating slumped to 115.1 with Bosh and Bargnani on the floor together last season vs. the 106.52 measured when Bosh played with someone other than Bargnani in the middle. A year earlier, the difference was a Bosh-Bargnani defensive rating of 113.38 vs. the 106.52 of Bosh without Bargnani.

Over the past three years total, Bosh-Bargnani struggled to a terrible 112.89 DR. Bosh alone was a solid 104.96 (2009/10 league average was 107.6) while Bargnani without Bosh was a still poor 111.69 DR.

The two big men simply do not complement each other defensively. Bargnani is an above-average one-on-one defender who does an OK job of keeping big men in check and blocking their shots. However, he is completely lost as a help defender.

He is often late rotating and recovering for the mistakes of teammates, a key requirement of a starting centre, usually the anchor of the defence.

Bosh, on the other hand, struggles mightily to defend one-one-one but is a great help and team defender, as evidenced by his fine play with the American Dream Team in Beijing.”

Chris Bosh knows this as well, and any serious effort to retain Chris Bosh, realistically has to start with moving on from Andrea Bargnani.

Lets not get into who we could have, and probably should have drafted when we had the 1st overall pick and no need for another power forward as we already had two on our roster.

The problem and one of the major reasons Bryan Colangelo wont trade his fellow Italian is escalation of commitment/commitment bias.

Escalation of commitment is defined by BusinessDictionary.com as:

“`Tendency to invest additional resources in an apparently losing proposition, influenced by effort, money, and time already invested.“

You can see Wikipedia`s description here.

These definitions describe Bryan Colangelo’s continued irrational support of Andrea Bargnani to a T.

SlamOnline.com writer Pardeep Toor’s thoughts on the Bosh-Bargnani ‘failed experiment’:

“It’s logical to cut your losses and start afresh after making a mistake. It makes more sense to admit fault, acknowledge wrongdoing, lick your wounds and start all over again. What doesn’t make sense is locking up your mistake for five years and $50 million and praying for a costly redemption – that’s disillusionment or false hope.

Andrea Bargnani is the Raptors’ disenchanted investment. Skin color and geography project Bargnani to be another incarnation of Dirk Nowitzki – an athletic big man who can drive, shoot from outside and get to the free throw line – all things he is painfully average at doing.”

Bryan Colangelo, I understand it is hard to admit you blew the first overall pick, but at least you can tell yourself that the draft was robbed of all its premier talent by David Stern changing the age minimum to enter the NBA that same year i.e. Oden and Durant had to go to college instead of entering that draft.

Andrea Bargnani is a Jose Calderon sized liability on defense and our insistence on starting him and giving him 12+ shots a game may have cost us our two best players in Chris Bosh and Hedo Turkoglu.

Another quote from the same Slam Online article:

“Offensively, Bargnani is not an efficient enough scorer (requiring 13.8 shots to get his 16.9 points) for teams to bother plotting to stop him – often times opting to switch on picks and rolls with a smaller defender and negating his quickness advantage over sluggish bigs.”

Hedo Turkoglu only took 9 shots a game and when you compare that to his last 3 years you can see why his numbers dropped. Bargnani being the second option instead of Turkoglu had a correlative effect in helping lead to Hedo’s dip in stats and inability to find a role in the offense, another major factor obviously being Jose Calderon’s playing style.

Chris Bosh is tired of playing with a 7 foot project center who is force-fed starter minutes and can’t play help D or rebound worth a lick.

Chris Bosh wants to win; he wants to advance past the 1st round of the playoffs.

And if he doesn’t feel he can do this with Andrea Bargnani as his center….who can blame him?

Raju Byfield is a Senior Sports Writer for Raptors Digest.

Raju Byfield also writes for Win My Fantasy League as a Senior Sports Writer/Fantasy Sports Analyst.

(2 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

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8 Comments »

Raptor Fan said:

I agree that Andrea is not a good center; He is a less than avg center that is playing out of his comfort zone.

The reason that Andrea and Chris does not work together:

a) Chris – Good Help Defender but not a good individual Defender

American Dream Team is a good example you have suggested

b) Andrea – Good Individual Defender and still learning to play the center position and every year he is been hear he has improved.

Andrea could slow down the best of them,

Dwight Howard
Tim Duncan
Gasol brothers
Bynum

The Major Problem is the following

1. Our Front Line is also full of Bad Defenders

Jose
He Don’t
Demar – He is a Rookie

This really makes us really bad defensive unit

Now Imagine instead of we had the following for the argument shake:

1. CP3/Rondo like PG who could defend his position but not liable on the offensive end
2. Demar – becoming a lock down defender like Igge but also drive and shoot the ball
3. Prince or similar peace that is not liable on the offence end

Defense in NBA can be created either on the front court or back court; all grate teams had the luxury of having at the both end. We were bad on defense because as a group we were bad on defense on front court and back court. As your article suggest, we were bad on defense because of one individual player, which is not the case. Would having a good Center like Noah would help this cause, of course it would to certain extend or it could also Noah get too many fouls and not be effective.

Andréa

09-10 TOR 80 80 35.0 0.470 0.372 0.774 1.3 4.8 6.2 1.2 0.3 1.4 1.5 2.7 17.2

Noah

09-10 CHI 64 54 30.1 0.504 0.000 0.744 3.4 7.6 11.0 2.1 0.5 1.6 1.8 3.1 10.7

We could clearly see that following:

1. Noah is a dominant defensive player with limited offensive skills but he utilizes defense very well.
2. Andrea is a more than avg offensive player who does not get enough touches due to the fact he plays with other PF who is also a good offensive player

If Andrea is playing with D-rose and Noah, you would see how good of an offensive player he is night in night out. The same goes for CB4 if he is playing with a more than avg PG and a good center you could see how he could dominate on the offensive and defensive end. In Conclusion, basket ball is a team sports no matter what superstars and the media says, individual talent alone can only take you so far look at the last 20 years history of NBA and this year’s playoff.

[Reply]

Raju aka RaptorCity Reply:
June 22nd, 2010 at 5:25 pm

Raptor Fan,

Great comments

I agree with your sentiments, BC did a poor job surrounding Bosh or Bargnani with the proper supporting cast. Bosh and Bargs do not complement each other and he should have wised up and admitted that when Bosh started taking the next steps in his development.

I just finished reading a piece suggesting the different direction the Raptors franchise would have taken had Joakim Noah not decided to return to Florida and made himself available for the draft that year….

I look forward to more of your comments in the future

[Reply]

# 22 June 2010 at 4:07 pm

aaron said:

Why would you give up on a 7 foot tandem thats 24 and 26. The biggest weakness was the point and the wing position not the power forward and centre.. Impatience and small minded thinking has taken over Toronto. Most big guys don’t mature untill 27. Its the media who is blowing a potential NBA champion tandem that could develop over the next three years. Typical of media to manipulate the public to sell stories.

[Reply]

Raju aka RaptorCity Reply:
June 22nd, 2010 at 5:19 pm

Hey Aaron,

Valid sentiments I guess.

Andrea is not a center, you do agree to that right?

Not sure Bargnani can be considered part of ANY championship team unless it was as 6th man…but lets hope he proves me wrong!

[Reply]

# 22 June 2010 at 4:51 pm

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# 22 June 2010 at 8:19 pm

Tim W. said:

Raptor Fan,

Firstly,. I’m not sure how Bargnani is still learning the center position. He’s been playing it in the NBA for four years. He’s 7 feet, defends centers better than PFs. Can people try and think up more excuses for a guy who underperforms year after year?

And I think you mean the Raptors had a bad defensive backcourt. Of course, the backcourt wouldn’t look nearly as bad if the front court was better defensively. It goes both ways.

Your complaint that Bargnani doesn’t get enough touches holds absolutely no water. He took 2 shots a game less than Bosh last season. He also took more shots per game than anyone on Orlando, Utah, Boston, San Antonio and only took 1 less shot a game than Amare Stoudamire. Bargnani’s biggest problem on offense is that he’s not an efficient scorer. He needs a lot of shots because he can’t get to the line.