WHY THE RELUCTANCE TO GIVE BARGNANI A CANADIAN 'CIAO'?

This about sums up where the man on the street in Toronto seems to have forgotten that he knows sweet F.A. about basketball.

The Toronto Star polled readers on how the Raptors should make use of the first overall pick. The most popular response, with 39 percent, was "Trade the pick." They got that much right. It's pretty hard to be decisive with this year's draft class.

But look who's second in the poll: Texas' LaMarcus Aldridge at 27%. Interestingly enough, nbadraft.net's forecast for how things will go on Wednesday night has Aldridge falling all the way to the Celtics at the seventh overall pick.

Granted, an online poll on a newspaper website isn't scientific, but it does indicate what the people who take an emotional stake in the team are feeling. It's worth wondering why only 15% of respondents say the Raptors should draft Andrea Bargnani -- who the smart money should be on for Wednesday, given all the recent developments.

Who knows? Could be a skepticism toward European basketball players, embodied in the general wiseassness of 10,000 Bill Simmons wannabes who are putting some variation on "Andrea Bargnani is Italian for Darko Milicic." Or it could just be that people who pay the mildest attention of the Raptors, are accustomed, after a fact, to being so snakebitten that they'll say "black" whenever The Organization "says white."

Well, wake up and smell the grappa, people. There's about a 95 percent chance that Bargnani will be putting on a Raptors hat for the photogs tomorrow night. That's the feeling here, and it's one also shared by the estimable Scott Carefoot (who's live-blogging tomorrow night's draft, starting at 7 p.m.).

Let's see... Raptors GM Bryan Colangelo jettisoned Matt Bonner, who would potentially cut into Bargnani's playing time, acquired a true centre, Rasho Nesterovic, to buy time for a young post player to develop, and to top it off, added the general manager of Bargnani's team in Italy to the front office. Sure, maybe there's a chance this doesn't add up to Bargnani becoming a Raptor. There's always a maybe.

Still, it's worth wondering why a newspaper poll reveals such shaky support for taking Bargnani. Here's where it must be pointed out that when it comes to the draft, there's at least two great examples that indicate Torontonians are less than prescient. There were the boos in 1995 for taking Damon Stoudamire over Ed O'Bannon. Sure, Stoudamire later left on bad terms, but he did more in the NBA than O'Bannon ever did.

And of course, last summer, then-GM Rob Babcock was pilloried for taking Charlie Villanueva, and a lot of people (including yours truly, who ran the headline "Raptors draft Charlie Who?" in the Simcoe Reformer), and that turned out pretty well.

So maybe we don't have all the answers here, people. In the absence of a sure-fire NBA star, Bargnani is worth a shot, although he would probably still be there at No. 3 or No. 4 if the Raptors traded down. So learn to like him.