Why it (probably) isn't time to trade Bargnani

[Lark Benson]

I know, I know. I want him gone as badly as you do. I'm just as sick of watching him loaf around the court and just as sick of the empty offence. But I don't think it's time to trade him. Not yet.

It's not a matter of untapped potential, or finding a niche or a role on the team. No, he's going to be traded at some point (or at least I pray to every god ever conceived that he will). It's about what he could bring back in a trade now versus what he could help bring back at a more opportune time. Now let me be clear here, I don't know when that time will be, or even if it happens to be right now and we simply don't know it. But unless Bargs is being traded to help bring back an all-star or a franchise player, then what's the point?

I'm sure a lot of you will reply that simply removing Bargs is addition by subtraction, and you're probably not wrong. I get the logic of just getting rid of him for whatever spare parts a team is willing to concede, and if you can get a legit player, then great. But consider that just about every time a team is forced to deal their all-star centrepiece, whether it's because they're unhappy, or likely to bolt, or their current team can't afford them, the package going the other way consists of a good but not great player and a bunch of picks and/or young players.

For Harden it was Martin.
For Deron it was Harris.
For Dwight it was Afflalo.
For Paul it was Gordon.
And so on.

Obviously there are exceptions, like Atlanta dumping Joe Johnson for cap relief, but you get the point. When trams are forced into a position of having to deal, that's what they look for: youth and a player that GMs can point to as helping to fill the void (both on the court and on the books).

For the Raptors, who likely aren't going to be bad enough to land a franchise player through the draft (this year's crop doesn't feature such a player, even if they do select first), and likely aren't going to attract one in free agency, dealing for one might be the only way. And if Bargs isn't part of the deal, then how would it get done? You presumably wouldn't want to give up DeRozan, Fields and Amir are hardly the kind of contracts a GM would want back, and Jose's cap-eating deal is gone after this year. Those are the only contracts on the books that could help facilitate a big trade, except for Andrea's. And to me, Andrea's deal is tailor-made for this kind of trade: 2 years left after this one, at a decent price for a guy that can pretend to be your first or second option while you rebuild. Most importantly, including him in any deal of this kind reduces the amount of youth you'd have to send back.

These kinds of deals often seem impossible or unlikely, but they happen all the time. Nobody saw the Harden or Deron Williams deals coming, but they happened because increasingly teams want to get something back for players they know might leave. So as unpopular as this opinion is likely to be, keeping Bargs around until an opportunity presents itself might make a lot more sense long-term than simply dumping him for whatever you can get this year. The Raps aren't going to be playing for anything significant this year or next, so there's no rush to rebuild (or at least there wouldn't be if the GM had job security).

So I say keep Bargs in the back pocket until it's time to pounce. I can put up with him for another season or two if it helps to finally bring the type of player back that you can actually build a team around.

[Craiger]

The deals for those stars were much more complicated than just those players.

There were numerous young players and draft picks included - Toronto has no first rounder to offer, and trading this teams young guys is taking additional step backwards.

I'd be remissed to not mention where those players went aswell - Houston, NJ (now a NY team), and LA. All which have the relative ability (ie. market and quality of team) to resign those players. (Harden was a given with RFA ofcourse).

Those deals don't happen all the time. Maybe you get one, two tops, of those types of players available in a year - and there are 29 other teams chasing them. Those aren't good odds.

Holding on to Bargnani in hopes of including him in a blockbuster deal is a bit of a pipe dream. Not impossible but not likely.

Its not worth the risk.

Scour the league for his value, find the highest bidder, move on with life.

[pillowmint]

Scour the league for his value, find the highest bidder, move on with life.

Amen.

A counter to those who believe his trade value is low currently. If he got injured trying to beef up his stats, what would his trade value be then?

Also, any GM that looks at a players performance over 15 games compared to the YEARS prior isn't worth his salt in this league.

It's whether that player could add value, will not detracting from a teams performance (hello captain obvious...me!).

The trade I'd pull the trigger on right now is this:

To Washington

Andrea Bargnani
Alan Anderson

To Toronto

Trevor Ariza
Kevin Seraphin
Martell Webster

Why do it? For Toronto it's a salary dump (everyone comes off the books next year) and Ariza is more of a SF than anything we have...who knows he would likely have a contract year (hahahah, mediocre stars seems to re-up in Toronto...sad but true)
Washington get instant offense at the PF position, which they need badly. Vesely isn't that guy (yet/ever) and Okafor and Nene can focus on cleaning up the glass. I think it works, but I'm sure someone here is going to tell me that we should get Rudy Gay for Bargs.

Bingo Bango - Jack Armstrong

[akashsingh]

I know, I know. I want him gone as badly as you do. I'm just as sick of watching him loaf around the court and just as sick of the empty offence. But I don't think it's time to trade him. Not yet.

It's not a matter of untapped potential, or finding a niche or a role on the team. No, he's going to be traded at some point (or at least I pray to every god ever conceived that he will). It's about what he could bring back in a trade now versus what he could help bring back at a more opportune time. Now let me be clear here, I don't know when that time will be, or even if it happens to be right now and we simply don't know it. But unless Bargs is being traded to help bring back an all-star or a franchise player, then what's the point?

I'm sure a lot of you will reply that simply removing Bargs is addition by subtraction, and you're probably not wrong. I get the logic of just getting rid of him for whatever spare parts a team is willing to concede, and if you can get a legit player, then great. But consider that just about every time a team is forced to deal their all-star centrepiece, whether it's because they're unhappy, or likely to bolt, or their current team can't afford them, the package going the other way consists of a good but not great player and a bunch of picks and/or young players.

For Harden it was Martin.
For Deron it was Harris.
For Dwight it was Afflalo.
For Paul it was Gordon.
And so on.

Obviously there are exceptions, like Atlanta dumping Joe Johnson for cap relief, but you get the point. When trams are forced into a position of having to deal, that's what they look for: youth and a player that GMs can point to as helping to fill the void (both on the court and on the books).

For the Raptors, who likely aren't going to be bad enough to land a franchise player through the draft (this year's crop doesn't feature such a player, even if they do select first), and likely aren't going to attract one in free agency, dealing for one might be the only way. And if Bargs isn't part of the deal, then how would it get done? You presumably wouldn't want to give up DeRozan, Fields and Amir are hardly the kind of contracts a GM would want back, and Jose's cap-eating deal is gone after this year. Those are the only contracts on the books that could help facilitate a big trade, except for Andrea's. And to me, Andrea's deal is tailor-made for this kind of trade: 2 years left after this one, at a decent price for a guy that can pretend to be your first or second option while you rebuild. Most importantly, including him in any deal of this kind reduces the amount of youth you'd have to send back.

These kinds of deals often seem impossible or unlikely, but they happen all the time. Nobody saw the Harden or Deron Williams deals coming, but they happened because increasingly teams want to get something back for players they know might leave. So as unpopular as this opinion is likely to be, keeping Bargs around until an opportunity presents itself might make a lot more sense long-term than simply dumping him for whatever you can get this year. The Raps aren't going to be playing for anything significant this year or next, so there's no rush to rebuild (or at least there wouldn't be if the GM had job security).

So I say keep Bargs in the back pocket until it's time to pounce. I can put up with him for another season or two if it helps to finally bring the type of player back that you can actually build a team around.

but if we are to maintain bargnani's current value as an asset over a season or two before he is dealt, doesn't that mean we have to give him significant minutes? And that is a huge problem, b/c it would mean

1) no accountability of bargnani.
2) losing culture drives current and possible future players away.
3)losing fans by losing so much.

the cost of keeping bargnani is too great unless we bench him and significantly reduce his minutes. But that makes him less valuable to trade.

[Fair89]

Probably right. Peanuts on the penny if we tried now. We'll have to showcase Bargs in a positive light to get a better trade in the future. It's been said a lot to have him as a 6th man. 6th man's are very important for the teams in the playoffs. My guess is he won't be traded this year at least.

[pdjjw]

I agree with your basic position that now is not the optimal time to deal Bargnani (but he must be dealt!). But I have a couple of concerns with your thinking. One, AB is not an all star player so I think your expectations of what you'd get back in any deal are overly optimistic. And two, we've already seen the kind of deal our GM is capable of swinging when faced with losing our all star player.

I'd have him coming off the bench as a scoring option in the second unit. Maybe it serves as motivation to get back to the starting lineup, maybe he thrives in that role or maybe he's just more of the same. Two of those options are good for the team, if only because they increase his trade value. If he remains as is, I say work the best deal you can swing - for pick(s), trade for a character veteran - or if there are no takers, amnesty him.

Regardless of what you think of his skillset, this is a 7 year experiment that just has not worked. It's time to move on.

[pillowmint]

I also meant to add. Cut Webster, let him roam the earth for another contract. Wiz sign Pietrus or Michael Finley (if the comeback rumors are true). I only included him in the deal to match salaries, not to have 5 sf's that aren't great.

[ceez]

I don't think the point of trading Bargs is to land a player that'll make us a contender, so much as addition by subtraction.

Last nights game was a perfect example. He was great from a scoring perspective but what he gave up in defense and rebounding and just effort in general made the scoring irrelevant.

Over the course of the season I've noticed when the team makes runs Bargs isn't on the floor. And when we lose the close games, who's our there? The Utah game was a prime example.

[Mediumcore]

I'm not sure whom you could trade him to. His contract isn't expiring so some other team would be on the hook for this season as well as the next two. You can boast that he's a 20 point scorer, but he'll give up just as many points. There are only a few teams in the league that can bring in a player like AB and do well, and those teams already have better players in place.

He's our problem for better or worse and I doubt you could give him away at this point. Maybe New York might be interested if Stat comes back and it screws up their chemistry and they just want a salary dump.

[Nilanka]

The absolute perfect time to trade Bargnani would've been last year during his infamous "13 game" stretch (like many of us were pleading for).

But just like last year, if we wait for Bargnani to improve his numbers again, does anyone honestly trust Colangelo to pull the trigger? Or is he more likely to say to himself, "see, I knew Bargnani could be awesome! I'm holding onto him for life!"

Not worth the risk. Like Craiger said, find the highest bidder and move on. This chapter should've been closed long ago.

[ceez]

Oh I'm sure you could trade him. There's bound to be a coach/GM out there that's interested in his potential/size. I remember Wolstat said recently BC isn't the only GM that likes Bargs.

[Lark Benson]

Didn't get a chance to respond last night, so I'll try to tackle a bunch of objections at once here. But let me just state that the reason I included the (probably) in the title was because we, as fans, of course have no idea what BC could get for Bargs right now just as we have no idea what he could get for him a year from now. It's simply my personal opinion that dumping him for spare parts isn't going to help the club long term.

The deals for those stars were much more complicated than just those players.

There were numerous young players and draft picks included - Toronto has no first rounder to offer, and trading this teams young guys is taking additional step backwards.

I'd be remissed to not mention where those players went aswell - Houston, NJ (now a NY team), and LA. All which have the relative ability (ie. market and quality of team) to resign those players. (Harden was a given with RFA ofcourse).

Those deals don't happen all the time. Maybe you get one, two tops, of those types of players available in a year - and there are 29 other teams chasing them. Those aren't good odds.

I agree that trading the team's youth would be a step backwards, but that's exactly why including Bargs in any such deal is essential: it minimizes the amount of youth going the other way. If the team traded Bargs at next year's deadline for example, they could easilly include their 2015 first rounder, a young guy like Ross, Bargs and maybe Ed Davis (depending entirely on what calibre of player is being traded for and what position they play, etc). That would keep a Val/DD/Lowry combo intact while adding a potential franchise player.

As for the ability to resign the player, I think it depends far more on the quality of the team than it does on the city. If a player gets here, is surrounded by enough talent that complements them and sees they have a chance to compete for a deep playoff run, there's a very good chance they'll resign. I'm not worried about that aspect of it.

And yes, the odds of the one of these deals coming up ARE slim, there's no denying that. But are they worse than hoping DD or JV develop into a franchise guy in 2-3 years? Worse than praying a free agent will sign here, or that the team will win the lottery? How else do you see the team landing a franchise guy?

but if we are to maintain bargnani's current value as an asset over a season or two before he is dealt, doesn't that mean we have to give him significant minutes? And that is a huge problem, b/c it would mean

1) no accountability of bargnani.
2) losing culture drives current and possible future players away.
3)losing fans by losing so much.

the cost of keeping bargnani is too great unless we bench him and significantly reduce his minutes. But that makes him less valuable to trade.

The key thing here is that by no means is Bargs the key piece being traded by the Raps, so his trade value declining is essentially irrelevant. Bargs would be the throw-in, filler contract that evens out the contract values being exchanged and helps fill the void left by a likely 20ppg type scorer while the young guys develop, not the centre-piece of the trade. What teams really want is flexibility (which Barg' deal gives, with likely 1.5-2 years left on it when traded), and a bunch of youth they can develop.

I say have him come off the bench, start Ed Davis. Bargs can jack up shots with the second unit, his defense will be less of an issue there, and you keep his contract in your back pocket in case you need it. And if nothing comes up, you can dump him as easilly then for spare parts as now.

I understand the 'losing culture' argument, but personally I think that's one of those bullshit sports cliches that needs to die. Skilled players win games, nothing else matters nearly as much. It's only a 'losing culture' until a player comes along that can drag a franchise out of irrelevance. We've already seen it once with VC in Toronto, but there are countless other examples of franchises that didn't matter until they landed a superstar.

I agree with your basic position that now is not the optimal time to deal Bargnani (but he must be dealt!). But I have a couple of concerns with your thinking. One, AB is not an all star player so I think your expectations of what you'd get back in any deal are overly optimistic. And two, we've already seen the kind of deal our GM is capable of swinging when faced with losing our all star player.

I just wanted to include this because I saw this response popped up a few times.

Let me be clear: Bargs is NOT the main attraction of any such future trade. As I said above, he's the cap filler / temporary attraction that the other GM uses to defend his trade. The youth and flexibility of a soon-to-be-expiring deal are what matters. Any trade for a franchise player would have to likely include Ross, a future first rounder, and possibly more. My point is that I don't see such a trade being completed without Bargnani's deal because the Raps don't have any other contracts on their books that would be appealing to another GM who needs to have all-star type money coming back his way to complete a deal (unless you want to give up Lowry or DeRozan, which you'd only want to do if you're getting a top-5 player at their respective positions).

As for what kind of deals BC can swing, yes he could probably get something semi-useful for Bargs, but again what's the point? Unless you believe that Lowry/DD/Val is a deep playoff core down the road, then all you're doing by dumping Bargs is treading water. On top of that, you could just as easilly dump him for spare parts next year (in fact it'd probably easier since his contract will be shorter the longer you wait). In my opinion dumping him now is just bad asset management.

[akashsingh]

Didn't get a chance to respond last night, so I'll try to tackle a bunch of objections at once here. But let me just state that the reason I included the (probably) in the title was because we, as fans, of course have no idea what BC could get for Bargs right now just as we have no idea what he could get for him a year from now. It's simply my personal opinion that dumping him for spare parts isn't going to help the club long term.



I agree that trading the team's youth would be a step backwards, but that's exactly why including Bargs in any such deal is essential: it minimizes the amount of youth going the other way. If the team traded Bargs at next year's deadline for example, they could easilly include their 2015 first rounder, a young guy like Ross, Bargs and maybe Ed Davis (depending entirely on what calibre of player is being traded for and what position they play, etc). That would keep a Val/DD/Lowry combo intact while adding a potential franchise player.

As for the ability to resign the player, I think it depends far more on the quality of the team than it does on the city. If a player gets here, is surrounded by enough talent that complements them and sees they have a chance to compete for a deep playoff run, there's a very good chance they'll resign. I'm not worried about that aspect of it.

And yes, the odds of the one of these deals coming up ARE slim, there's no denying that. But are they worse than hoping DD or JV develop into a franchise guy in 2-3 years? Worse than praying a free agent will sign here, or that the team will win the lottery? How else do you see the team landing a franchise guy?




The key thing here is that by no means is Bargs the key piece being traded by the Raps, so his trade value declining is essentially irrelevant. Bargs would be the throw-in, filler contract that evens out the contract values being exchanged and helps fill the void left by a likely 20ppg type scorer while the young guys develop, not the centre-piece of the trade. What teams really want is flexibility (which Barg' deal gives, with likely 1.5-2 years left on it when traded), and a bunch of youth they can develop.

I say have him come off the bench, start Ed Davis. Bargs can jack up shots with the second unit, his defense will be less of an issue there, and you keep his contract in your back pocket in case you need it. And if nothing comes up, you can dump him as easilly then for spare parts as now.

I understand the 'losing culture' argument, but personally I think that's one of those bullshit sports cliches that needs to die. Skilled players win games, nothing else matters nearly as much. It's only a 'losing culture' until a player comes along that can drag a franchise out of irrelevance. We've already seen it once with VC in Toronto, but there are countless other examples of franchises that didn't matter until they landed a superstar.




I just wanted to include this because I saw this response popped up a few times.

Let me be clear: Bargs is NOT the main attraction of any such future trade. As I said above, he's the cap filler / temporary attraction that the other GM uses to defend his trade. The youth and flexibility of a soon-to-be-expiring deal are what matters. Any trade for a franchise player would have to likely include Ross, a future first rounder, and possibly more. My point is that I don't see such a trade being completed without Bargnani's deal because the Raps don't have any other contracts on their books that would be appealing to another GM who needs to have all-star type money coming back his way to complete a deal (unless you want to give up Lowry or DeRozan, which you'd only want to do if you're getting a top-5 player at their respective positions).

As for what kind of deals BC can swing, yes he could probably get something semi-useful for Bargs, but again what's the point? Unless you believe that Lowry/DD/Val is a deep playoff core down the road, then all you're doing by dumping Bargs is treading water. On top of that, you could just as easilly dump him for spare parts next year (in fact it'd probably easier since his contract will be shorter the longer you wait). In my opinion dumping him now is just bad asset management.

you've pretty much convinced me. I can buy that teams will look at bargnani's contract as flexibility in a bit, I still think it is improbable that we will find a trading partner, but hey let's look at what's going on with everyone else before we have that discussion.

Im just curious? Do you see dwane casey bringing bargnani off the bench, this is infuriating.

[BasketballCrush]

...here is the funny part, there will never be a time, he is NOT making the allstar game, he will not lead us to a 500 record, the less they see the more untapped potential he has.... lets leave some 40/20 potential to the next person to kick his tires

[ebrian]

I would have said that if we waited until the trade deadline we'd have a better idea (assuming they get the minutes) of what type of players Ed Davis and Terrence Ross are going to be. We'd also get to find out if DeRozan is able to sustain his current level of play. There's more at stake here than just Bargnani. Waiting would allow better evaluation of where our talent development is at. Making a trade now may improve our win column, but ultimately does that really matter at this point?

What needs to be done, in the meantime, is scaling back on Bargs' minutes. For Ed Davis' sake, and really, for Casey's culture's sake. This team needs to get back to defense first and let the offense develop itself. The fact is this team has a lot of offensively gifted players and I'm not worried about the offense at all. We have to get back to the place where the defensive mentality is there, where it's natural and instinctual. After that they can start working on more than the basic offensive sets.

We were 9th ranked in defensive pacing last year, but what is often overlooked is that Bargs only played in 31 games last year. There's quite a contrast in our defensive pacing with and without Bargs in the lineup, and not a whole lot of difference offensively.

With Bargnani: Our PTS/G: 92.8 (25th of 30) ▪ Opp PTS/G: 96.0 (15th of 30)
Without Bargnani: Our PTS/G: 88.9 (29th of 30) ▪ Opp PTS/G: 92.3 (4th of 30)

In terms of value, I'm not sure that these past 12 games will make much of a difference and neither will scaling back his minutes. I think the type of teams out there that would be looking for his services would all use him very differently than we have. For one thing, it'll most likely be good teams that trade for him looking for a boost in offense, and which are already strong in defense/rebounding (that's why they're good teams in the first place). Future suitors of Bargnani's services will have a lot less difficulty keeping him from being exposed on the defensive end. Bad teams will stay the hell away from Bargs because they already have their own issues to deal with, and Barg's contract is just terrible for a player of his caliber.

[vino]

"The fact is this team has a lot of offensively gifted players and I'm not worried about the offense at all."
This is not a fact. Have you seen Amir jacking up long bricks recently? Have you seen Calderon dribbles for 10+ seconds? Have you seen any sort of ball movement for more than 10 min at any given night?!

I support all other points, and this team most definitely needs to get back at concentrating on D. So yeah, your main point is legit.

As for trading Bargs, the logic tells me to swallow Lark Benson's reasoning... but my eyes can't wait that long. I wanted him gone since the beginning. Saw his first few games and the lack of effort was evident right then. We have waited for too long.

Free Raps Fans!

[ebrian]

"The fact is this team has a lot of offensively gifted players and I'm not worried about the offense at all."
This is not a fact. Have you seen Amir jacking up long bricks recently? Have you seen Calderon dribbles for 10+ seconds? Have you seen any sort of ball movement for more than 10 min at any given night?!

Actually it is fact. Don't dwell on guys like Amir Johnson to argue the point. Next you'll tell me how bad Dominic McGuire is. Duh. I was referring to guys like Calderon, Lowry, DeRozan, Kleiza, even Lucas. Each of these guys are capable of going off for 20+ points while having a fairly efficient ball game. More minutes and experience will help guys like Ross and Valanciunas to have similar offensive abilities. Ball movement has more to do with Casey's offensive sets than offensive giftedness. This team needs to focus on defense and the scoring will come.

[KeonClark]

I was referring to guys like Calderon, Lowry, DeRozan, Kleiza, even Lucas. Each of these guys are capable of going off for 20+ points while having a fairly efficient ball game.

Sometimes I wonder if people here even watch basketball. In what world is Linas Kleiza, and ESPECIALLY John Lucas, capable of going off for an efficient 20? John Lucas has ALWAYS been a fringe NBA player and basically every team in the league has 5-8 guys who can score better than him. So if he is indeed part of our great offense, than every team in the league must be on the verge of a dynasty.

[ebrian]

Sometimes I wonder if people here even watch basketball. In what world is Linas Kleiza, and ESPECIALLY John Lucas, capable of going off for an efficient 20? John Lucas has ALWAYS been a fringe NBA player and basically every team in the league has 5-8 guys who can score better than him. So if he is indeed part of our great offense, than every team in the league must be on the verge of a dynasty.

You've got an interesting imagination, but unfortunately no one actually said these guys will average 20 points per night. The Raptors are still the bad team you see before us. After all I did project this team to win their 5th game in January.

What would you say is an efficient night of scoring? A 50%+ shooting night? I'd say 50% is super efficient.. 45% is probably enough but I did a query for 50%+.

John Lucas III (3): http://bkref.com/tiny/F6yky
Linas Kleiza (23): http://bkref.com/tiny/LhWcq
Jose Calderon (29): http://bkref.com/tiny/QqJWk
Kyle Lowry (20): http://bkref.com/tiny/TjE5D
DeMar DeRozan (42): http://bkref.com/tiny/3uiTk
Andrea Bargnani (83): http://bkref.com/tiny/2b2tF

For arguments sake I've added Bargnani in there, but the 5 are above and we still have JV and Ross. JV's already done it once, Ross had a 19 point game two nights ago on 9 of 17 shooting. Give each of these guys 2-3 years and check their occurrences again.

Btw, awesome tool I just found. I've always known about the game finder at B-R.com but not the ability to pull up specific players and run queries on every game they've each played. Pretty awesome..

[slaw]

Right now, I don't want Colangelo trading anyone. I don't trust him at all. Any trade he makes will, based on his track record, make the team worse. Just leave it alone, keep losing until he gets fired - then we can talk about trading players and making deals.