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Andrea Bargnani’s injury may mark the end of his disappointing Toronto tenure

Andrew Bucholtz

Raptors' power forward Andrea Bargnani is expected to miss the rest of the NBA season following an avulsion sprain to his elbow last Friday, and that may signify the end of his time in Toronto. If so, it's an apt way to end the tenure of one of the most disappointing Raptors ever. When general manager Bryan Colangelo took Bargnani first overall in the 2006 draft, ahead of players like LaMarcus Aldridge and Rajon Rondo, many hoped the Italian seven-footer could provide an outside scoring threat in a big man's body, giving defenders matchup nightmares. Unfortunately for the Raptors, they were the ones who usually wound up with the matchup nightmares thanks to Bargnani's lacklustre defence and poor rebounding, and even his scoring was notably inefficient; he's shot just .437 from the field for his career and just .400 this season. Colangelo even admitted he tried to trade Bargnani this year, but that didn't work out thanks to an earlier injury. As Matt Moore writes over at CBS' Eye On Basketball, it's hard to imagine Bargnani being back in a Raptors' uniform next season:

Bargnani has been enemy No. 1 to Raptors fans this season, after his brief resurgence last season turned into even lower failures this season when he did play. GM Bryan Colangelo said prior to the deadline that the team was actively trying to trade Bargnani, not something you typically hear from a general manager. But they couldn't find a deal before the deadline and Bargnani stayed put prior to this latest injury.

You have to think this is the end of Bargnani's time in Toronto one way or another. If a trade isn't made this summer, you can expect the Raptors to use the amnesty clause to get out of his sizable remaining contract.

Not with a bang, but a whimper, apparently.

The comment about Bargnani being enemy No. 1 for Raptors' fans is an interesting one, and a generally fair one. For a team that's trying to establish a new identity with Rudy Gay and Kyle Lowry, Bargnani's an uncomfortable reminder of past missteps, but it goes beyond that. His play this year has been particularly dismal, and that's shown by the stats; he's averaging just 12.7 points on .400 shooting (significant drops from the 19.7 on .432 he put up last year), grabbing a career-low 3.7 rebounds per game, and posting a Player Efficiency Rating (PER) of just 11.3, his lowest since 2007-08. As Joseph Casciaro wrote about his play this year, "Bargnani has produced some of the most uninspiring basketball we’ve ever seen."

Moreover, Bargnani's effort has been questioned many times, especially on the defensive and rebounding fronts. He looks particularly bad by comparison on a team that has an all-effort player like Amir Johnson at the same position. Johnson was taken in the 2005 draft, so he's been in the league just slightly longer than Bargnani, but he was picked 56th overall by Detroit rather than first; his NBA career's largely been built on hustle and grit, and he's turned into a remarkably impressive player. Johnson's minutes per game have shot up this year (from 24.3 to 27.9), and that's been largely thanks to Bargnani's injuries and ineffectiveness (his minutes have dropped from 33.3 to 28.7), but he's looked like a much better option; he's well ahead of Bargnani in rebounds per game (7.3) and shooting percentage (.569), he's more effective on the defensive side of the ball, and he's posted a much higher PER (18.0 against Bargnani's 11.3). Johnson's style in particular helps makes watching Bargnani so disappointing, though; when your 6'9'', 237-pound power forward's out constantly banging and crashing for boards and your 7'0'', 256-pound one isn't, it doesn't look good.

Bargnani's lacklustre Toronto tenure is far from all his fault. A lot of the disappointment is because he was taken first overall, and that's on Colangelo, not him. In Colangelo's defence, though, that was a pretty terrible draft overall; it's only produced three all-stars (Aldridge, Rondo and Brandon Roy, who's had significant injury issues), and an awful lot of teams overlooked Rondo (who went 21st). Bargnani was drafted too high, though, and that hasn't helped his career at all; he's carried the weight of sky-high expectations throughout his NBA tenure and been under a lot of pressure. It also hurt Bargnani that the Raptors have been so bad for so much of his career; that's caused him to often be seen as a primary scoring option, when on a better team, he'd be a secondary or tertiary one (and that's a role he might be much better suited for). Still, with this injury likely marking the end of Bargnani's time in Toronto, it's hard not to see his Raptors' tenure as a giant disappointment. At least he gave Canadians easily-mockable pasta commercials: