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Authored by Louis Roxin - 21st June, 2010 - 7:22 pm
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Merry Christmas, Raptors Fans
The Raptors might not be playing good basketball right now, but there are plenty of things for Toronto fans to be thankful for this holiday season.
A Melo Behind The Superstars
Carmelo Anthony has never been one of the league's most efficient offensive players.
A Melo Behind The Superstars
Carmelo Anthony has never been one of the league's most efficient offensive players.
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In just days, Chris Bosh is positioned as the one key decision-maker who could play the role of king maker as we enter the biggest summer in the history of NBA free agency. This role takes on some extra figurative meaning if he decides to team up with LeBron James, but Bosh’s choice will also determine whether he himself will take his place among basketball royalty.
Bosh has already established himself as one of the most prolific scoring and rebounding big men in the game. But that’s not enough. Last season he put up 24 points and almost 11 boards a game and shot nearly 52% from the field. And yet he still prepares for free agency with some questioning just how good he really is.
The answer to those doubters is certainly not to go it alone as the only premier player on the roster, trying to shoot the moon by carrying lesser teammates through a taxing regular season and into the grueling post-season. The answer is to prove that with another All-Star by your side – something even the best players in history have not been able to win big without – you can be one of the two main cogs on an elite team.
Recognize that the benefits of two perennial All-Stars combining forces do not all flow to the better of the two players. Just look at Kobe Bryant and Pau Gasol.
After Shaquille O'Neal was traded away but before Gasol was acquired, a series of disappointing post-season performances were creating doubt about Kobe’s greatness and his frustration was bubbling to the surface. In one playoff game at Phoenix, he seemed to give up as the Suns pulled away.
Sound familiar? History seems to be repeating itself with the suspect body language LeBron exhibited during Game 5 against Boston and his inability to get over the hump with his supporting cast in Cleveland.
Kobe’s hard times came to an abrupt end with Gasol’s arrival and the Spaniard now rightfully gets heaps of praise for returning Kobe to his throne and earning his own helping of glory in the process.
When Gasol was in Memphis, the closest NBA observers knew him as one of the better big men in the league, but he was mostly unknown to everybody else. Even for those who had high respect for Gasol’s game, the fact that he was not on teams that went deep into the playoffs was a difficult thing to defend.
Winning in the spotlight of a major media market changed all of that for Gasol. His statistical production declined next to a prime wing player but Gasol’s star – and the adoration that follows – surged dramatically.
This is the identical position Bosh could find himself in next season. And you get the sense that he understands the opportunity that is about to be in front of him.
"It just depends sometimes," Bosh said in mid-April when asked about being the first option or the second option on a championship contender. "I think sometimes guys have different situations, and they’re able to play like Pau Gasol with Kobe. I think he gets more attention now than when he did when he was averaging better numbers in Memphis."
LeBron seems the better partner for Bosh because Dwayne Wade has already captured his first title. Not only is LeBron clearly a more dominant player (and better assist man) than Wade, Bosh would earn even greater accolades from being the first running mate with whom LeBron was able to win a championship.
Shaquille O’Neal teamed with Kobe for three rings and helped give Wade one. But an aging Shaq couldn’t do the same for LeBron, who will enter his eighth season still looking for his first title.
Bosh should get even more credit than what Gasol has received for getting Kobe back on the championship track, or that Bosh himself would get for delivering a second ring to Wade. Bosh and LeBron would each be hoisting their first championship trophy together.
On the flip side, losing is a very unforgiving condition.
The truth of the matter is that Bosh could push his scoring average over 26 and increase his rebounding numbers over 13 and still suffer the sting of that unseen but all-too-real asterisk that could stick in the side of any Hall of Fame candidate after his career comes to an end: We’re speaking, of course, of the cruelly permanent asterisk that attaches itself to highly productive players who were not consistently a member of good teams. There is a night-and-day difference between the labels of winner and also-ran, and individual stat lines can’t do a thing to rub the loser label off once the media decides to stamp it on.
Bosh knows this all too well because even though he continues to put up dazzling numbers year after year, his critics have gained more and more traction with Toronto missing the playoffs in each of the last two seasons.
What follows is that the floodgates start opening and some of the criticism (surprise, surprise) is extreme and unfair.
Bill Simmons of ESPN, for example, jumped in after the Cavaliers were knocked out and began peddling the myth that Bosh and LeBron would not be enough to lead a team to the promised land.
"[LeBron] could bring only one good free agent with him [to New York], and from what we've seen, would LeBron + [Bosh] … translate to anything more than what just happened in Cleveland? Please," Simmons wrote.
A few weeks after this pronouncement, Kobe and Gasol went on to repeat as NBA champions, a successful blueprint that firmly debunks Simmons’ theory. LeBron has surpassed Kobe in most aspects of the game and Bosh is a purer, more versatile scorer than Gasol.
In my imaginary debate with Simmons, we would then move on to jousting over whether Danilo Gallinari or Wilson Chandler can develop into as effective a third piece as Lamar Odom, whether the Knicks can find an adequate defensive big man or slot Toney Douglas into the role Derrick Fisher occupies, etc. But we’d be debating the finer points at that stage. Back-to-back championships from a comparable nucleus should lead one to the conclusion that Simmons, and other naysayers, are significantly underestimating the potential of a LeBron-Bosh tandem.
One of the brightest and most thoughtful guys in the league, Bosh is smart enough to know all this already. But you get the sense that he still may not be completely ready to admit that he needs help to reach the top.
"Winning is very important to me," he said during a more recent interview on ESPN Radio. "Just being in the situation, you can't get it all. Sometimes you can. Maybe you can, but you never know."
A month ago, his agent Henry Thomas said that he and Bosh were "still in a process of deciding what the priorities actually are."
Plain and simple, Bosh’s top priority should be to pair with a superstar and spend the next several years winning a lot of basketball games. Bosh’s standing over the next five or six NBA seasons – and ultimately his career legacy – depend on it.
Louis.Roxin@RealGM.com |
