My initial reaction was that Toronto overpaid and are still paying for potential rather than production. Then I saw someone post some his stats here and realized that I had only seen him play once all last year. After checking his stats, he's worth the new contract. He's overpaid for his production, but a young guy coming off a breakout season is going to be overpaid. Actually this raises an interesting question: people criticize Toronto for taking Bargnani instead of Aldridge for the top pick. Who would you take as the top pick now, Bargnani or Aldridge, and don't say you'd take Roy.
Toronto will always appear to overpay compared to the going rate in American cities because of the tax rates. 63. Are teams really competing on a level playing field? Since the tax rate is different in the different states and Canada, don't the teams in a more "tax friendly" state have an advantage over the other teams? Yes they do. For example, since Florida has no state income tax, an offer from Orlando will offer a higher net income than the same offer from Los Angeles. However, the league added a regulation to help neutralize the tax disadvantage of Canadian teams. All teams are permitted to offer a signing bonus of up to 20% (see question number 62). For U.S. residents in Canada, this bonus is taxed at just 15%. Using this bonus, Canadian teams can nearly achieve tax neutrality. http://members.cox.net/lmcoon/salarycap.htm#Q63
Bargnani is a late bloomer, I don't think many people have seen him play enough to make a sound judgement on where he stands compared to other players. Stats don't tell the whole story... at this point in time you can probably say Aldridge is better.
He started to "get it" last year after looking completely overwhelmed his first two years. Still can't handle contact or defense, but he's close to being a Peja lite. He was putting 18-6 up this spring (Feb-Apr), which is pretty good SF numbers. The 46% from the field (Feb-Apr) was pretty hot, and the 40% from downtown was extremely nice. All that said, I have extreme doubts that he can carry the load if Bosh leaves. Like Peja, you badly need someone to take the real heat off of him. He has to play off of a real franchise player or defenses will cream him.
Its a good signing by the Velociraptors. Bargnani and Calderon give them a nice core on offense along with TurkeyGlue, if they can fill out the rest of their roster with a couple of more defensive minded players they should be contenders in the East for years to come with the matchup problems they can create. Bargnani will likely never be a great one on one defender but he can definitely be a nice team defender with his length and mobility and his offensive game seems tailor made for today's NBA.
