Bad news guys. Remember when the Knicks traded for Andrea Bargnani, one of the things we leaned on the most was that Chris Copeland was basically a cheaper Bargnani? That they could do the same things, but actually Copeland does it better? Then when we let Copeland walk to Indy, we were up in arms even more because now we weren’t just adding another guy to the roster that mirrors what Copeland does, we REPLACED Copeland with him.

I did some research. It turns out that even in Bargnani’s worst year as a pro, he’s more versatile of an offensive player that can help open the floor for Carmelo while still being able to score himself than Copeland was.

This past year was by far Andrea Bargnani’s worst year in the NBA. He was riddled by injury, he was booed out of the building, he shot poorly… he was about to be amnestied for God’s sake (source: none)! Meanwhile, Chris Copeland finally made an NBA roster, he became a fan-favorite, and wouldn’t you know it, he actually HELPED his team win some [regular season] games. To compare the two, we’ll start out with their shot charts, separated by zone:

Andrea Bargnani (35 games played)

Chris Copeland (56 games played)

Here’s what we can draw from this:

For a guy who was labeled a three point specialist by experts and bloggers all over the interwebs, Bargnani sure does take a lot of mid-range jumpers. Actually, he took almost 70 more mid-range jumpers than he did three-pointers. And he only took 13 more three-pointers than he did shots in the paint.

Chris Copeland is almost as bad from mid-range as Bargnani is from three-point range. He only took 69 mid-range shots last year actually, as opposed to 135 three-pointers. But if you’re going by the theory that all that matters are three-pointers, this is irrelevant.

Copeland is obviously better down low. He’s a better offensive rebounder and, according to Synergy, most of his points came in the paint off offensive rebounds. Let’s get real, no one is feeding either Cope or Bargs in the post.

So right off the bat, it seems like calling Bargnani one-dimensional or labeling him a three-point shooter is inaccurate. Well at least we tried. But where it really becomes apparent that Bargnani is way more of a versatile player that can really help the offense is when you break down those zones, like so:

Andrea Bargnani (35 games played)

Chris Copeland (56 games played)

Now what do we see here:

Chris Copeland is actually borderline below average from every spot on the floor that isn’t under the hoop or on the right wing. He’s not as painfully bad from beyond the arc as Bargnani was, but there’s a little bit of false advertisement thanks to his right wing three percentage.

This is just weird more than anything: Bargnani shot a very respectable 45% from the top of the arc… but when he takes a few steps in to the top of the key, he’s well under average.

From every other spot inside the arc, Bargnani is a pretty solid shooter. And considering the bulk of his shots came inside the arc, but outside the paint, that’s a pretty good thing.

So what conclusions can we draw from this?

For starters, Andrea Bargnani can hit from a lot more places on the floor than Copeland can. That’s not what’s important though… HOW he hits from those spots on the floor is. When you break down Bargnani’s offense in 2012-2013, it ain’t pretty. Synergy can provide you with those stats, and none of them will blow you away. 2012-2013 was also his worst year as a pro. If you go back two, three, even four years though… his pick and pop efficiency is top of the line. Literally.

From HardwoodCanvas.com:

Sooo, that’s pretty good. And yes that was two years ago, but it should be noted that sample size is larger than this past season, and it also wasn’t Bargnani at his best (or healthiest) by the raw numbers. Tim Duncan, Kevin Love, Kevin Garnett… that’s some good company. You probably also have to be able to set some pretty decent screens if you’re THAT effective in receiving the ball after one and being wide open enough to hit shots at that high a rate.

IMPORTANT: The free throw percentage that you see in that table. That means that he is getting fouled on 12.9% of his pick and pop attempts, head and shoulders above the rest of the crew. Now, a common blogger theme has been “LOL defenders won’t have to play him tight because he’s a bad shooter.” Welp, this is gonna hurt, but the NUMBERS… they disagree with that sentiment. So either teams are going to leave him wide open and he will hit the shot 40-45% of the time or go to the line 13% of the time… or they are going to have to stick a defender on him, allowing guys like Melo and JR to have a most likely favorable one on one matchup.

Now, I digress. This past season, his stats are miserable (per Synergy). Couldn’t find one that I’d be able to use in my favor. But what we’ve looked at is the sum of all parts. Of course, Bargnani is not going to be Kevin Garnett, Kevin Love or Tim Duncan from mid-range in terms of production. Especially not on this team, where he will be a third option for most of the minutes he’s on the floor. But I also know who research tells me he won’t be: a worse Chris Copeland.

It comes down to Woodson, basically. The gameplan couldn’t be more clear for the people that take the time to look at it. Bargnani is a very potent mid-range jumpshooter that does his best work when he doesn’t have the ball. I don’t know, but to me, that seems like a perfect fit next to a guy like, oh, let’s go with Carmelo Anthony? A player who isolates more than anyone? Not only could it take some of the workload away from him, but it can help him be more effective.

That does create a problem however: the team might actually be better, and then what’s a blogger to do?

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