Drafting Andrea Bargnani Was a Move Hinkie Would Have Made

New Philadelphia 76ers President Bryan Colangelo is criticized for drafting Andrea Bargnani, but it’s a move Sam Hinkie would have made, too.

I was mortified to see a link on my timeline in favor of Bryan Colangelo with the Philadelphia 76ers, even though that link ended up saying a lot of what I was thinking, but felt it was too soon to say. Maybe not. Max Rappaport put up a column saying newly hired Bryan Colangelo deserves the benefit of the doubt, and he’s right.

As I said in my Thursday morning column, there’s no guarantee that Bryan comes in with the same mindset that his dad had about this team. In fact, his father never really had a mindset about this team. I’m certain Jerry Colangelo, in the four short months he spent “with” Philly didn’t actually care about the future of the team. His only goal was to get his son a job, that’s been made clear. Goal achieved, and now he’s gone.

Bryan, though, is just the beneficiary of a very evil act on Jerry’s part. But now, Jerry is gone, Bryan is here. And he might not be all that bad. In fact, one of the moves he’s criticized for most, the drafting of Andrea Bargnani with the first overall pick in the 2006 NBA Draft, was a move I could easily see Sam Hinkie making.

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Bryan was the general manager of the Toronto Raptors when they selected Bargnani, and was the mastermind behind selecting the Italian player with the top overall pick in that draft. At the time, this move was quite unprecedented. He was the first European player to go first overall, and just the second non-American player to go in that slot following Yao Ming.

For context, the second player selected overall in that year’s draft was LaMarcus Aldridge. For added context, Sam Hinkie was a special assistant to the Houston Rockets general manager. He wouldn’t be named Vice President of the Rockets until two years later.

Bargnani was compared to the likes of Dirk Nowitzki, who, at the time, was having an incredible career. Just the season before Bargnani came into the league Dirk had a 2000-point season and averaged 26.1 points, 9.7 rebounds, and 3.1 assists per game. So taking Bargnani, although unprecedented in many respects, seemed logical at the time. He could have been a franchise changing player if the comparison to Dirk held up, and that’s what the Raptors needed.

Really, if we take out any added retrospect we have about this pick — which I will go into in just a moment — it’s tough to imagine a scenario in which Hinkie wouldn’t have made the same selection as Bryan, here. Passing up on a player like Aldridge for a European player is totally a Hinkie move. Now, onto that retrospect:

The Raptors hadn’t seen the playoffs or a winning season in four years, and hadn’t gotten out of the first round of the playoffs in five years. It was a dark time for the Raptors, who were just over a decade old at the time, and had only visited the playoffs three times.

Andrea had a decent rookie year, but injuries did slow things down. He appeared in 65 games averaging 11.6 points, 3.9 rebounds, and 0.8 assists per game.

Feb 10, 2016; Philadelphia, PA, USA; Philadelphia 76ers general manager Sam Hinkie prior to a game against the Sacramento Kings at Wells Fargo Center. Mandatory Credit: Bill Streicher-USA TODAY Sports

In his sophomore season, he had to switch to the center position that he was not used to to make room for Chris Bosh in the frontcourt. His stats fell as he struggled to immediately adapt to his new position. Once Bosh left for the Miami Heat, however, Bargnani got his chance to shine. He averaged 21.4 points, 5.2 rebounds, and 1.8 assists that year, by far his best all around season to date without the pressure of playing alongside the All-Star Bosh.

Hindsight is always 20/20, of course but looking back, Bargnani should have been a late lottery to late first round pick. Over 7 seasons with Toronto, he averaged 15.2 points, 4.8 rebounds, and 1.3 assists. He was no superstar by any means, and no first overall pick for sure. In the meantime, Aldridge, the second overall pick that season, averaged 19.4 points, 8.4 rebounds, and 1.9 assists per game over his first nine years in the NBA.

It wasn’t a secret that the Raptors and subsequently Colangelo had made the wrong choice in the draft. Their instinct on Bargnani was wrong, and their gamble on an international player did not pay off.

The Raptors franchise did not improve, either, as they would never make it past the first round of the playoffs following Bargnani’s drafting — still true, to this day — and only made it to the playoffs in his first two seasons with the team.

So, how exactly is this a pick Hinkie would have made? This was a risky pick, which is something that just screams Hinkie. Hinkie was known for doing things out of the ordinary, and taking a risk on players that other teams were afraid to. He was bold with his draft picks, putting his chips on injured Joel Embiid and Jahlil Okafor, who people had doubts about. Bryan was the same way while he was running the Raptors, and looked at Bargnani not as a bust, but an opportunity, which is how Hinkie chose to see his players.

Additionally, Bargnani has three distinct qualities that show up in three of the most prominent big men draft picks that Hinkie has acquired over the past three seasons. Most obviously, he’s a European player, just like Dario Saric, traded for on draft night by the Sixers in 2014. Hinkie never would have taken Saric with the first overall pick, but they were still both players that these two separate general managers decided to take risks on despite the criticism that European players don’t always play as well when they transition to the NBA.

Secondly, Bargnani was asked to play out of his position to make room for another frontcourt player, something 2013 draft night trade Nerlens Noel was asked to do this past season, and something he struggled with just like Andrea did. What makes it even more similar is that in both instances, this happening was completely avoidable. The Raptors could have easily dealt away Bosh and gotten a lot in return if they wanted Andrea to play at his highest level, and the Sixers didn’t have to draft Okafor. Still, Hinkie and Bryan both subjected their players to this hardship, and were confident that they could play through it. Both ended up being wrong.

And thirdly, Bargnani struggled with injuries and that prevented him from playing as much as he could have in the beginning of his career, something Joel Embiid knows all too much about, as he has still not played a single game as a Sixer.

All three of these guys are a lot like Andrea. They look like they could be great someday, but we really don’t know yet. But we were willing to praise Hinkie for making these picks, and are quick to scold Bryan for his mistake with Andrea, just because we have some retrospect to go along with it.

The harsh reality is that all three of these Sixers players, Noel, Embiid, and Saric, have yet to prove that they can have better careers than Bargnani. Each of them has either played at a similar level to Bargnani in his first few seasons, or not played a single game in the NBA.

For all we know, each of these highly-praised Hinkie draft picks could end up being draft picks just as bad as the one Bryan orchestrated in the mid-2000s. And as Max pointed out in his article, Bryan did have a history of some really good draft picks, including Steve Nash, Shawn Marion, DeMar DeRozan and Jonas Valanciunas. All of those players were drafted with picks 5 or higher.

Next: Brett Brown's Future is Unkown, But We Can Be Optimistic

It’s really quite interesting that the crazy cult-like Hinkie supporters stood behind most, if not all of Hinkie’s draft picks and moves, but are so quick to criticize a similar move from the new GM just because of his last name. Jerry might be evil, but that doesn’t mean Bryan is.

Hinkie and Bryan aren’t all that far off from each other. Hinkie would have picked up Andrea Bargnani in a heartbeat if he had the chance.