Rank these 5 power Forwards in their primes. Elton Brand, Pau Gasol, Chris Bosh, Amare and Carlos Boozer.

[An Unbiased Fan]

while amare did trash duncan in the 2005 WCF, if we're talking defense, then duncan put up 27.4 ppg on 52.7 FG%. when duncan and pau faced off the WCF, with pau mostly single covering duncan, he held him to 22.4 ppg on 42.6 FG%. and pau's huge standing reach still very much made him a presence around the rim for LA. it was the fact he could combined with bynum to shut down the middle and then combine with odom for interior passing on offense that made him so valuable.

I'll leave this here. Watch Pau's defense on TD, and tell me what you see. I don't have the stats when it was just Pau vs TD.

Watch on YouTube

i see basically what i thought i remembered. the lakers were willing to let pau play single coverage basically every time against duncan, and, as was not uncommon post-2003, tim duncan struggled to shoot well against length. if you count that last tip, then i think he shot 7-14 in this video, and this was from his best scoring and shooting game of the series. 30 points on 12-25 shooting ended up being his best game of the series by a decent amount, with the next best either 22 points on 8-17 or 29 points on 10-26. no 50% games the whole series.

There was a lot more rotation use later on with guys like Odom and Turiaf. Game 2 was a blowout, and game 3 wasn't in doubt either. LA put Pau on TD since they both played center, but TD got what he wanted while guarded by Pau. TD was 10-26 for 29 points in a game he played 44 minutes in and grabbed 17 rebs. That's from working like crazy. TD averaged 17+ rpg against Pau that series. 2nd for SA was only 4 rpg, so he expended a lot of energy.

I don't see Amare's defense against TD in the 1st round being much worse than Pau's. He just had way more defensive liabilities around him in PHX

[Bomb81]

Amare
Brand
Gasol
Bosh
Boozer

[BrianInPhilly]

Gasol is 1 for me. I think people underrate how much he improved when he went to LA - thus underrating his prime. If he was “LA Gasol” on Memphis, statistically he would be better or as good than all these guys in leading roles.

#2 - Amare
#3 - Bosh
#4 - Brand
#5 - Boozer

[homecourtloss]

Amare and Pau were about the same defensively. In no way was Gasol much better on defense. Odom took the tough big assignments.

It's hard to tell if this is some bizarre bias to make Kobe Bryant better by degrading his teammate or if you know so little about Non-Lakers that you actually have no idea how bad on Stat is on defense.

I mean I watched every Pau game with the Lakers in realtime, and plenty of Suns games. Revisionist history isn't going to work with me.

And saying Amare and Pau were the same defensively isn't degrading him, it's just realty. When people say Amare was a horrible defender, that's pretty silly. The same people who will try to elevate Nash's defense on those Sun team at the same time.

Neither Pau or Amare were all that good on defense, they were both passable at times.

You want to give the data deniers and analytics refusers some leeway, but they’ll do things like this. Amar’e was a terrible defender by every measure, even the eye test for someone who “watched every Pau game and plenty of Suns games.”

On top of this, Amar’e was a big negative, slight negative, neutral, or a slight positive in every single season from 2005 to 2010 when he wasn’t sharing the court with Steve Nash. With Nash off the court, Amar’e’s terrible defense couldn’t be hidden with a highly effective offense.

[HeartBreakKid]

Watched a ton of Gasol and Amare games and comes away thinking they're equal on defense. Alrighty....


I know this is a hard thing to swallow but just because you watch the game doesn't mean you know what you're looking at. 99.9% of people do not even look at a defender who isn't guarding the guy with the ball.

So I think "watching Laker games" is not much of an argument (they're the most watched team in the league, not exactly a stellar credential).

[SinceGatlingWasARookie]

Amare
Brand
Gasol
Bosh
Boozer

[falcolombardi]

Gasol
Bosh
gap
Amare
Boozer

Have not really watched elton brand footage to get a better idea on him

[frozt]

I'm actually stunned with the number of posters here saying Gasol is their first choice. He's mine as well, but I for sure thought more would have Bosh or Amare as well. And also lol to that person that stated Gasol and Amare were equals on defense in their prime. Gasol was at minimum average in his peak leaning towards "good" as a defender. I don't think Amare every even touched that level.

[Jaivl]

Oh, just noticed I got so blinded by the **worst take ever** that I didn't really get to sort them

player - peak - years somewhere close to peak

1. Gasol - +3.25 to +3.5ish, ~8 year consistent prime
2a. Bosh - +2.75ish, ~7 year consistent prime
2b. Brand - +3.25ish, ~6 year healthy prime
4. Amar'e - +2.5ish, 5 year healthy prime
5. Boozer - +2.25ish, 2-3 year healthy prime?

[SinceGatlingWasARookie]

OP, I hope you add up the numbers for us before the thread dies.
Maybe a point system. 5 points for best, 4 points for second etc.

[carlquincy]

Tough tough ranking if we are talking about franchise player.

For a #2 player, its straight forward Pau for me. Perfect #2 player. Versatile, player with complete game and zero drama.