Bargnani impresses. I’ve been down this road so many times now and we all know that Bargnani is nothing if not the ultimate tease. But it’s worth noting that he had the best season of his career, and a pretty respectable one across the board. The distance he’s travelling from his second season or even midway through last year to now is remarkable. The blueprint with him was always that in year five he’d be the player everyone projected him to be; that the rest of his rookie class would come along faster but he’d be the best player in the long run. That middle 120 games of his career really made that hard to believe. Year two was a write off and half of year three was too, but he’s been pretty good the last 120 games. He can defend his position one-on-one; he can post up all sizes of players and has a mid-range game that makes him a tough cover for most bigs and he can shoot with unlimited range. You have to be concerned about his tendency to disappear between and within games, and his off-the-ball defence is pretty bad (and why is it that hard, really? That I just don’t get). But if Bosh does go and Bargnani gets all the ball he wants and is paired with hard-nosed Anderson Varejao-type at the four spot, I’d be interested in seeing what he could do. Is there more there? Or is he some combination of Mehmet Okur and Troy Murphy? It was interesting hearing him talk frankly about his wasted rebounding potential and off-the-ball defence. It was interesting seeing him shave his non-playoff beard. He promises to be the most interesting story of the 2010-11 season for Raptors fans. Not saying that’s a good thing, but still.
M. Grange
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