ballocks

one final point: anyone who criticizes bryan colangelo for drafting bargnani is probably delusional. this was not 1984, where you have a team taking sam bowie ahead of michael jordan.

the draft went like this:

1) andrea bargnani
2) lamarcus aldridge
3) adam morrison
4) tyrus thomas
5) shelden williams
6) brandon roy
7) randy foye
8) rudy gay
9) patrick o'bryant
10) saer sene
...
it only gets worse from here.

you could say with firm belief that at least five of those players have brought less to their teams than bargnani (ammo, shelden, foye, o'bryant and sene). only brandon roy has truly kicked it off in two years, and i think the raptors (at a time when they could least afford it, imo) would have been slagged mercilessly had they taken roy at 1, or even managed to trade out of 1 to take him at ~6. hindsight is 20/20. i'm sure everyone in the league had their eyes on roy that june and were wondering what the raptors were doing by looking him off... oh wait...

i'm not saying this to defend bargnani. only that we can ill afford to forget the entire draft. it's not the raptors' fault that they won the lottery in 2006, if that's what the critics imply. bargnani has not yet panned out but it's not like his peers have blown him out of the water either.

if he never develops and the draft results don't change much over time, i wouldn't call it a mistake so much as i would call it bad luck. if morrison, thomas, aldridge and gay manage to make names for themselves in this league, fine. anyone else? i wouldn't lose any sleep.

peace