Bryan Colangelo's Best and Worst Moves in Toronto

5. Reactionary Management

This is another Kapono point, but also goes to one of the positives in O'Neal. Why is it that the Raptors seem to abandon their plans after every playoff loss?

They lost to New Jersey because Bosh was beaten up inside and the outside shooters were unreliable. They go out and get Kapono the next day. They lose to Orlando because they can't contain Dwight Howard? Enter Jermaine O' Neal.

I wonder if Colangelo is seeing something I'm not, and perhaps it'd be safe to say that given his resume he probably is. But reacting to other teams is a bad principle in managing teams.You have to find a way to have other teams react to you. If you have a vision, go for it.

He started out this way with his extremely unconventional, yet bold idea that he could turn Andrea Bargnani into a center who would then be a match-up nightmare. Signing Kapono and to a lesser degree trading for O'Neal really show a short-sighted approach. However, as underlined with O'Neal above, he may have other things in mind.

6. Bargnani with the First Overall Pick in the 2006 NBA Draft

I'll go on the record here and say at the time of the draft, I felt that the best player from the 2006 draft in 2012 would be either Andrea Bargnani or Tyrus Thomas. I've always felt my evaluation for talent was pretty good prior to the emergence of Brandon Roy and Rudy Gay.

However, even today I feel that Bargnani is the player with the highest ceiling, and alongside Roy, has the highest chance of reaching his ceiling. That said, was he a number one overall pick? No. He was a project.

Even as he plays well, you can easily see many areas which he could easily add on. He's a player with virtually no limitations. He has the right size, the right coordination, right shoulders, right length, right shooting touch, right quickness, right hands, and right feet to become a superstar player in the NBA. He's also deceptively athletic, although he may lack explosiveness.

That said, he was far from ready for the NBA. While he was extremely gifted offensively, his development as a big-man was closer to that of a high-school freshman.

Considering these things, Colangelo still made his love for the young Italian so transparent that by the time he drafted Andrea, Andrea was already shopping for a house in Toronto.

When you consider the possibility that they could have let him slip and traded down, you have to be a little upset at the lost opportunity. In Colangelo's defense, the three teams rumored to be most interested in Bargnani were the Raptors, Bulls, and Suns.

It certainly didn't help that the Bulls were picking at number two and that Andrea filled an even bigger need for them than he did for Toronto. When you consider the Bulls' lack of belief in LaMarcus Aldridge as a prospect, one might assume that Andrea Bargnani was sitting on top of their draft board as well.

7. A Colossal Scouting Blunder

I'm not quite certain if there is a bigger supporter of Italian basketball than myself. Despite this fact, when the 2007 NBA draft rolled around I was absolutely indifferent to the deal the Raptors had in place with the Heat to grab Marco Belinelli if he should be available at the 20th pick in exchange for Kris Humphries.

I didn't think Belinelli would be an NBA starter and felt that even after his solid summer league that his game was far too one-dimensional. The Warriors selected Belinelli at 18 and the Raptors held on to Kris Humphries.

At this point, I think I nearly broke everything within my reach, watching a perfectly great opportunity to get a potential All-Star level player that late in the first round.

There were basically two players I was praying the Raptors would target. The more unrealistic option was Julian Wright. The one option Colangelo carelessly looked past was Rudy Fernandez.

There he was. Your starting shooting guard for the next ten years. He was an international player to boot. I can't imagine how a team so high on international scouting and drafting became so consumed with the one-dimensional Belinelli that they essentially overlooked the next Manu Ginobili.

This was a chance to turn Rafael Araujo into a lottery- caliber player. Making this move alone would justify ten bad moves. Instead, they refused to give up Humphries who at times thinks he's the second coming of Kareem, and allowed one of the best young teams in Portland to pick him up.

It's in a strange way fortunate for opposing teams that Oden seems to have been the wrong pick for the Blazers, because had he been the right pick, they would be winning championships until Barrack Obama's son was in office by the way they were drafting.

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