The Raptors have been playing a lot better as of late, on the road of all places. Their journey out west netted them two wins and two losses including a dramatic double overtime victory against the Utah Jazz. They returned east on Sunday night to demolish the Nets in New Jersey in the absence of their star player, Andrea Bargnani, who sat out for the second game in a row after re-injuring his left calf in the game against the Jazz. The Raps looked good without their big man, coming out strong in the third quarter, something they haven’t done often this year, to storm from behind and beat New Jersey 50-34 in the second half. It was a promising victory.

With Bargnani out again (he has played in 13 of the Raps’ 21 games this season), the Raps may have to start asking some big questions about his future with the team. His injury issues over the last two years and his almost complete lack of rebounding presence under the net are troublesome. He seems to have stepped up his defense this year, and his point totals are up, but in his sixth season with the league, the former number one draft pick has not produced how we hoped he would.

There are some benefits to parting ways with him. First off the Raptors are burdened by two huge contracts both to mediocre players. Calderon is the highest paid player on the team, scheduled to make over $10.5 million in the final year of his contract next year (but I don’t even want to get started on him). Bargnani is making $9 million this season, but that amount will increase $1 million each season finishing with $12 million in 2014/15, the final year of his contract. With that sort of dough tied up in those two it would make a lot of sense to part with one if not both of them.

In a league where the decided ways to win are: a) stack your team with high-priced superstars (ie. Miami) or b) develop a young team from smart drafting (ie. Oklahoma City), there seems to be another way to win this year; I’m thinking of the Denver Nuggets. Last season when Denver traded Carmelo to the Knicks, the initial reaction was that New York was going to get better and Denver was going to get worse. But after finishing the year 18-7, the Nuggets have continued playing strong this season going 14-6 (2nd in the West) with 105.4 points per game (1st in the league). All they had to do was rid themselves of their star player.

I’m not saying that if the Raps dangled Bargnani out there we would be able to get for Andrea what the Nuggets did for Carmelo, but freeing up contract space and gaining some cog players and draft picks could be the way for the Raptors to go. Since losing Chris Bosh to “the decision” that brought him to Miami, Toronto has accumulated a record of 29-74 (.282 winning percentage) with Bargnani at the helm. With no apparent plan of signing any big names for next season, maybe it’s time the Raps rebuild, and trading Bargnani and drafting smart this year could be a good start. If Toronto wants to improve moving forward, developing a player from next year’s draft and focusing a team around him could be the way to go. If we were to trade Bargnani to a team looking for a big man down the stretch who can also shoot threes, we could land some more young players in return who have a little bit of experience in the NBA and can work with the newbies. It would be hard to make out as well as the Nuggets did, but at this point I think the Raptors need a complete rebuilding plan, and I unfortunately don’t see Bargnani in it.

Nick McIsaac is Toronto Standard’s sports writer. Follow him on Twitter (for everything sports related) at @nickclass.

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