|
I suppose it was inevitable that right after I threw in the towel on this Raptors' season, they went ahead and scored back-to-back impressive victories over tough opponents for the first time this season. Of course Bargnani has had a very good three-game stretch after I had written him off as a bust. And it's only natural that Anthony Parker would score the second-highest point total in his Raptors career after I implied that you could pretty much stick a fork in his back.
Does any of this mean I'm jumping off the fantanking bandwagon? No chance. The Raptors are still 14-20 and will probably have to get past Miami in the standings if they're going to grab the sixth seed and avoid the certain death sentence of facing Boston or Cleveland in the first round. Miami's on pace to win 46 games so the Raptors will likely have to go 32-16 the rest of the way in order to have a chance at that seed. If you think this team is capable of winning two out of every three games the rest of the way, you're more optimistic than I'll ever be.
So I find myself observing with detachment as we face the possibility that the Raptors could string together five straight wins if they continue their recent level of play and go on to beat the Bucks, Wizards and Grizzlies. Unfortunately, just when you might be ready to start getting excited about this team, they follow those games with back-to-back battles against the Celtics. If the Raptors can take the next three and then split the Celtics doubleheader, then I'll be prepared to consider taking this team seriously.
Now that I've micturated sufficiently on your parade, I suppose it's time to revisit the progress of Bargnani, who just strung together his second decent three-game stretch of the season (the previous one was in mid-November against the Heat, Nets and Celtics). Looking at Bargnani's game log for this season, a few interesting things stood out. Let's set 45 percent as a reasonable field goal percentage we should expect from somebody with his shot selection. Bargnani has only shot better than 45 percent in 12 of his 34 games so far this season. It won't surprise you to know that those games have come in bunches (eight out of 11 games early this season, plus his last three straight games) but you might be as amazed as I was to discover that he went 16 games in a row (from Game 13 on Nov. 23 to Game 28 on Dec. 22) without hitting that shooting mark. That's one bricktastic month.
The buzz seems to be that his confidence has returned, though I don't know how you could tell that it ever left. Bargnani doesn't seem to care whether his shots are falling or not — if you give him playing time, he'll keep gunning. Isolating that sucky 16-game stretch from the rest of the season, I learned that he averaged a shot every 3.0 minutes during the "month of suck" compared to a shot every 2.8 minutes in his other games — that works out to a difference of about one shot over the course of a typical Bargnani game. I'd be willing to bet that minor discrepancy had more to do with guys passing him the ball less when he was missing everything than it was attributable to his own supposed lack of confidence in his shot.
Bargnani apologists like to discount his shitty games and claim that he'll be more consistent if he's given regular playing time in an established role. Bargnani haters like to remind you that his shitty games still outnumber his good ones and he wouldn't be receiving this much playing time in the first place if he wasn't Bryan Colangelo's "chosen one". The truth is that both sides are partially right. He does seem to play better when his position and playing time are established — but that doesn't mean you can discount the games where he stinks up the joint. And whatever the numbers say, the haters can't ignore the fact that the Raptors just logged their two most impressive consecutive wins of the season when he was the starting center and played in over 30 minutes both games.
I don't know that I believe that the key to Bargnani's (and the team's) success is to slot him in as the starting center for the rest of the season. But I do know that I'm tired of the ongoing debate between the apologists and the haters so I wish Colangelo would go ahead and trade Jermaine O'Neal so that Bargnani can play 35 minutes every game at center and hopefully settle this debate once and for all. J.O. isn't helping the Raptors win games now and he's definitely not part of the team's future — so at this point he's just an impediment in determining what our Italian enigma is really capable of.
Of course, O'Neal's $21 million contract is a pretty big logistical barrier to making any kind of deal so I'm not holding my breath on that happening until he's in his final contract year next season. So I fear we can expect at least three more months of some people claiming that Bargnani's getting jerked around while others insist he's just a jerk. Either way, I'm certain of one thing: both sides are fucking nuts. 
|
