Soft Euro wrote:
Breaking down plays is something completely different than advanced stats. If you look down at singular defensive possession you can precisely see what goes wrong with the teamdefense as well. I agree with you on the advanced stats though. For instance: it happens quite often that people compare a players PER with the PER of his direct opponent, but if you look at the games you would see that in many cases he won't be defending (of be defended by) his 'direct' opponent; basketball just isn't a game where every player on offense looks for his direct opponent and never leaves his side so statistical analyses can be made easier.
I think, as you allude to, that you have a little bias developing and maybe you're being just a little negative in general (i'm not going to say "too negative" because well ... we're the Raptors) as from what I've seen in your post, you seem to visiualize the worst case scenario a lot more often than the other way round. Concerning the bias: you were the one who posted that you remembered the game where Speights supposedly burned Bargnani. I really did not know how that went so I looked it up and watched the plays, but it was absolutely not a case of Bargnani getting burned. (Speight even got his three offensive rebounds in the one minute and 43 seconds of the second quarter that Bargnani wasn't on the floor). An interesting question would be why you remember it that way while it wasn't what happened on the court. No offense intended btw.
There is a lot of talk of hiding Bargnani and building around him. I don't certainly don't see it that way if we keep him. I we were really building around Bargnani we would have had a defensive center a long time ago and we would have gotten us some veterans on the perimeter instead of taking looks at Bayless and James Johnson. So I just don't see how we've been doing that.
Concering the makeup of the team: in my opinion that's all a matter of perspective. I think we need a good defensive force in the frontcourt with more length and strength than Davis and Johnson anyway; no matter if we keep Bargnani or not. Also: in any team you need balance, no matter who we are going to put out there in a couple of years it needs to be a balanced team; if we keep DeRozan we would need at least two other players who can shoot the three; that would not be building around DeRozan, that's just getting a balanced team out there.
I also think that Bargnani has some good traits on defense like stipulated in the article of Pruiti. I also think that the whole team was crap at rotating and closing down shooters with yes, Bargnani as the frontrunner in this department. Besides individual performances in teamdefense the ones I blame most for this is the coachingstaff. Having size in the frontcourt is incredibly important in this league right now if you look at the contending teams. A sevenfooter with at least a 7'2"/7'3" wingspan protecting the rim and the paint is a must and you probably need to pair him with another tall guy with good wingspan who is able to spread the floor (and I mean to win it all, not get a good regular season result). Davis and Amir don't have the physical makeup (and the skills) that are needed for this in my opinion. I might be wrong here, but that's the reason I'm not that high on Davis and Amir as starting powerforwards in the future. We'd still need that center and they would at least need to improve their ability to stretch the floor. The fact that Bargnani is such a terrible matchup for opponents, one that is very rare in the league, makes me interested to see what can happen if we have a more balanced team and better coaching. My opinion about this is based on the idea that if a team with Bargnani could work the ceiling for that team would be higher than if we would drop him and e.g. Ed Davis would work out.
