Is Ross the New Bargnani?

[JWash]

I agree with j wash, bargnani was always better than ross.

I didn't say always better. I'm just saying the way Ross is playing now is even worse than Bargs when he was with us except for maybe the games he played in 2012-13 (his last year in Toronto).

[KeonClark]

I didn't say always better. I'm just saying the way Ross is playing now is even worse than Bargs when he was with us except for maybe the games he played in 2012-13 (his last year in Toronto).

Ok fine. Yeah his last stretch in the Rudy gay era was godawful. From 2008-2012 bargnani was better than any month of play of ross career

[S.R.]

Bargnani made the whole team worse. Ross is still a positive just camping out on the 3 pt line. Bargs' usage and minutes were also in no way comparable to what Ross is getting right now. In terms of opportunity to impact the game, Ross is on a Sonny Weems/Jamario Moon level right now. He's hardly even playing, which is a lot different than being a starter and sucking.

[Apollo]

No I remember him just fine.

- 5.4 points on 5.5 shots per game
- 28% from 3
- 46% TS%
- -12 netRTG
- playing bad defense
- Averaging more turnovers than assists

Bargs was bad here but he never had a year quite as bad as how Ross is playing now except for perhaps his very last year here in Toronto.

You see him lately? Bargnani is a confirmed bust.

Ross still has hope of "getting it". Sometimes it does happens later. Really... Not saying this is a case but if it's happened before it will happen again, sometime, somewhere, somehow.

[rightsideup]

Ross was not #1 overall but he tease 51pt game stretches of great defense,excellent shooter at times and can jump out of the gym

[JWash]

You see him lately? Bargnani is a confirmed bust.

Ross still has hope of "getting it". Sometimes it does happens later. Really... Not saying this is a case but if it's happened before it will happen again, sometime, somewhere, somehow.

Bargs still had some hope of "getting it" at this stage too. Remember when he had that goal of grabbing 2 rebounds a quarter?

[KeonClark]

Ross was not #1 overall but he tease 51pt game stretches of great defense,excellent shooter at times and can jump out of the gym

This #1 overall stuff largely depends on the year u were drafted. It's not like anybody tought bargnani to be some saviour, some years (like last year) the #10 pick has more hype than the previous years first overall.

[LJ2]

Bargnani had higher expectations placed on him than Ross, so the fact that Ross is playing horribly is less disappointing. I think most people here were at least hoping that he could hit his open 3s and play passable defense but that doesn't seem to be happening at the moment.

Agreed.

The expectations for the two players are much different. With Bargs, he was a number 1 pick and was supposed to become a franchise player whom along with Bosh was supposed to take us to another level. With Ross, we just expect him to hit open 3's and play passable defense.

[DanH]

Bargnani had one league average season (in terms of WS/48, or individual production) in 2011-12, with a decent PER. That was the year of 13-game Bargnani, or 20-game Bargnani if you include his red hot 7 game finish to the year as well. Even that year he had a negative on-court net rating.

We don't have historical RPM's to judge impact stats, but Bargnani always ranked terribly. For example, in that year where he was the best he ever played, he had a -4.3 DRAPM (RAPM being the historically used version of RPM) - good for 10th worst in the league.

Then look back at the rest of his career here. WS/48 rates of between .05 and .07 his entire career. Ross lines up nicely here with a typical .05 (.03 this year, but SSS). But look at the impact numbers! Walking backwards from that career year for Bargs: -5.3 (worst in the league), -4.8 (worst in the league), -3.11 (14th worst). That's right, consecutive worst defensive impact in the league seasons. I don't think there has ever been a player who is worse than Bargnani was, for all his talents.

Ross has never approached that level of awful. True, he was a bottom 10 defensive impact guy last year, but he makes up for it with his offensive impact - Bargnani was never much better than average on that end while Ross mitigates half his defensive shortcomings with offensive impact. And surprise surprise, unlike Bargnani and his bottom-10 or near it every year defence, Ross has come back this season and posted pretty average defensive impact stats (while his offence has fallen off a cliff but not nearly far enough to put him in bottom of the league conversation).

Ross has been bad. Last year he was terrible defensively. This year he is terrible offensively.

And he hasn't even come close to being as bad as Bargnani was when he was here.

[Apollo]

Bargs still had some hope of "getting it" at this stage too. Remember when he had that goal of grabbing 2 rebounds a quarter?

OK, and what's your point? Is there a universal Bargnani rule I'm unaware of? Some people do hit their stride later in their career, it's a real thing.

[octothorp]

The big difference, IMO, was that Bargnani had such an unusual skillset that the only way to use him was to try and build a team around him to make up for his varying deficiencies. Raptors spent years tweaking pieces, trying to compensate for his lack of rebounding, help defense, offensive consistency. What they were left with was a bunch of assets that never really worked with each other. If Bargs was struggling, the whole team struggled, because it was built specifically with him at the centre of it.

Ross is frustrating, and deserves much (not all, but much) of the flack he's getting. But team-building-wise, he's a traditional, versatile asset. He does not bring down the whole team when he's having an off-game; which isn't a good sign for him personally, that he's become somewhat immaterial to the W/L success of this team right now. When he's playing well, he doesn't need big minutes or a lot of touches to have a positive impact.

So I guess it's kinda a demonstration of how good things are for the team right now that our whipping boy is a 15 minutes a night, 8th on the depth chart, 5FGA per-game-or-less guy. All of our top six or seven guys are all doing their job pretty well (or in the case of Carroll, are getting a bit of an injury/new-player grace period).

[Axel]

The answer to the title question is no.

Not even close.

[SkywalkerAC]

Looked straight bad tonight. I'd love to know what's going on up there.

[Triplethreat89]

Just my personal opinion but, if I was somehow put in a situation where I had to choose between Ross or Barganani on my fantasy roster... I would rather choose to keep Bargnani... At least Bargnani stretches the floor and doesn't injure his thumb playing ps4... and Bargnani for whatever reason is confident

[peanutwoozle]

I'd compare him to Turkoglu instead.