There aren't many storylines - which aren't even a thing, really - around the Toronto Raptors, but there's one that I couldn't get out of my mind: what's happened to Andrea Bargnani this year. Over at The Good Point, I explain how he's changed from a black hole and why it matters:
In a year marked by some bad teams, the Toronto Raptors are one of the worst. This is not a new thing. They’ve been bad for years, with a defense more porous than Havarti cheese. Last year, they regularly allowed 120 per game, sometimes as much as 140. You don’t have to know basketball to know that’s bad.
The stats bear that out: the 2011 Raptors allowed the fifth most points per game, the fourth-lowest SRS and lost the third-most games in the league. And Andrea Bargnani, their much-maligned star, finished the season with just 2.6 Win Shares and a 16.4 PER, despite playing the second-most minutes on the team.
Things aren’t much better for the Raptors this season. They dropped eight in a row in January, are 8-16 and have the league’s second-lowest points scored per game (86.8). And that’s mostly because of Bargnani. I mean it in a good way.
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