Andrea Bargnani: Raising the Bar

January 11, 2009

by Robert Seagal… When the Raptors drafted Andrea Bargnani, they probably envisioned a player who would one day score in the 20s and stretch defenses with his long-range game. Or so we thought.

It may be entirely possible that if that was the ceiling Colangelo had seen, he would have very well dealt the struggling Bargnani as the offers started to fill his mail box. He didn’t budge. After Bargnani’s horrendous 2007-2008 campaign, he said, “I’m still a huge Andrea Bargnani fan.”

This season, we all started to see what some Italian fans had already seen glimpses of in terms of Bargnani’s overall game. Some are calling him among the elite centers in the league defensively.

That might be pushing it, but I could see him as one of the 10 to 12 best ones. The way he’s handled the Yao Ming’s and Tim Duncan’s in certain spurts is very encouraging.

Some might even say his defense is ahead of his offense, and his offense is actually fairly above league average. So what do you have?

What exactly does Colangelo mean when he says that, “We still made the right pick,” as Brandon Roy and Rudy Gay tear up the league as franchise players? You have a No. 1 overall pick.

One might argue that there is something about that first overall pick. Unless it’s a Kenyon Martin year, the general rule is you go for a rare talent whom you hope becomes more than simply a franchise player.