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2007-08 Per 36 Minute Averages: 15.3 PTS, 5.6 REB, 1.7 AST, 0.7 BLK, 0.4 STL, 1.7 TO 2007-08 Advanced Stats: .495 TS%, 9.2 TRB%, 10.6 PER These profiles will feature nine players on the Raptors' roster that I have been able to evaluate from previous performance. For explanation of the stat lines, check out my primers on Per 36 Minutes Averages, TS%, TRB% and PER. Andrea Bargnani will probably never be able to escape from the shadow of Dirk Nowitzki. He was compared to Dirk as soon as he began to be evaluated as a 19-year-old prospect. The comparison became more widespread when the Raptors took him first overall in the 2006 draft, as Raptors fans expected Nowitzki-esque averages of 25 and 10 once Bargnani hit his stride. Even in the NBA2K8 video game, color commentator Kenny Smith refers to the Dirk comparison during gameplay. Two seasons into Andrea Bargnani's NBA career, comparing him to Nowitzki — or any other NBA star — is starting to look pretty ridiculous. Whether it's Dirk, Chris Bosh, Kevin Garnett, Dwight Howard or almost any other elite player, they share a common trait of continual improvement over their first four or five seasons. Andrea Bargnani followed up a mediocre rookie season (I know he was the runner-up in Rookie of the Year voting, but that was a putrid draft class) with a pretty horrible sophomore season. This does not appear to be a roadmap for stardom — which is what we've typically come to expect out of a first overall draft pick. By far, the weakest part of Bargnani's game so far has been rebounding. Bargnani will probably never be a good rebounder, but it would be nice if he could at least grab eight or nine rebounds per 36 minutes like you would expect from any seven footer with two fully functioning hands. Bargnani's career average after two seasons is a horrible 5.6 rebounds per 36 minutes. Players don't usually show significant improvments in rebounding effectiveness over their career, but Nowitzki turned out to be one of the exceptions to that rule. He averaged 6.6 rebounds per 36 over his first two seasons and then jumped to 8.7 boards per 36 in his third season. So maybe there's cause to hope for improvement in that glaring weakness in Bargnani's game. In Ryan McNeill's excellent post on Bargnani on Hoops Addict, Sam Mitchell remembers what it was like playing against Nowitzki early in his career: "I'm telling you, we used to sit in the locker room and beg to guard Dirk Nowitzki because he was seven feet and he couldn't post you up. He wasn't shooting eyes out of the ball with that fadeaway jump shot. He wasn't doing it. We felt like that was an easy night, that we would beat him up. Now, ain't nobody drawing straws to guard him. Last time I guarded him I was like, 'Help. Can I get some help over here? I can't guard this seven-footer.'" Nobody's scared to guard Andrea Bargnani right now — when they bother to guard him at all, that is. Bryan Colangelo and Sam Mitchell both seem to legitimately believe they can mold Bargnani into a dangerous player who can do damage anywhere from two to 25 feet from the basket. At the moment, he's not much of a scoring threat anywhere in the offensive zone, as his Hot Spots chart from last season shows.
As you can see, Bargnani couldn't even convert 50 percent of his shots from right in front of the basket — which is pathetic for a seven-footer. Bargnani and the Raptors' staff have their work cut out for them in coaching Bargnani to become the offensive weapon he was supposedly drafted to be. On the defensive end, Bargnani is decent in man-to-man coverage against other big men but tends to struggle against quicker, smaller players. For the most part, help defense appears to be an entirely foreign concept to him. A big man who can't or won't grasp the importance of this concept is a serious liability, and it's not unusual to see the Raptors give up several easy baskets per game when Bargnani watches someone else's man glide past him. If you've read this far without requiring a trip to the dentist from grinding your teeth down to the pulp, you must have surmised that I think Bargnani has a lot of holes in his game. I "get" what Colangelo saw in him when he took him first overall in the 2006 draft. In what appeared to be (and what has mostly proven to be) an unexceptional draft class, Bargnani's combination of size and offensive finesse must have seemed very intriguing. Two seasons in, the intrigue surrounding him is turning to frustration among Raptors fans bordering on outrage. Colangelo and Mitchell want Raptors fans to be patient with the development of Andrea Bargnani. That's fine, but if we don't see drastic improvement from him in 2008-09, that patience will pretty much run out. |
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