Post#650 » by Ji » Thu May 28, 2009 9:26 pm
here is the article from National Post
Has Bosh gone as far as he can go?
Questions over Raptors' franchise player
Bruce Arthur, National Post
Watching the NBA playoffs these days, Chris Bosh comes to mind. There is no particular reason that he should, of course, since the centrepiece of the Toronto Raptors was never close to making this post-season. Instead, the free-agent-to-be is sending Twitter updates such as the one from a week ago that read, "Everyone, please stop asking me to come and play for the team in your city. I get that question everyday now. I just want to enjoy my summer."
As do we all. That includes the guys on the teams still playing for an NBA championship -- the Los Angeles Lakers, the Denver Nuggets, the Cleveland Cavaliers, and the Orlando Magic -- though they're probably more interested in postponing their summers. To do that, tradition dictates that with few exceptions, it takes at least one true superstar to win a title. The four remaining teams each have their candidate: Kobe Bryant in L. A., LeBron James in Cleveland, Carmelo Anthony in Denver, and Dwight Howard in Orlando.
Kobe and LeBron are dueling for the title of the league's best player. though it says here that LeBron is clearly ahead, and that Miami's Dwyane Wade might well be No. 2. Neither Howard nor Anthony is at their level; Howard remains offensively rudimentary and struggles at the free-throw line, while Anthony was as much knucklehead as superstar over the first five or six years of his career.
But both have become forces of nature amid well-stocked teams. Howard, the league's reigning defensive player of the year, was averaging 20 points, 16 rebounds, and 2.3 blocks going into last night's Game 4 against Cleveland and has become the league's dominant centre; Anthony is averaging 27.1 points in the post-season, has discovered defence, and seems to be blossoming into a genuine star.
In every game, you can see the varying degree of stardom. LeBron and Kobe are A-listers. There are perhaps four or five other genuine franchise guys around -- Wade, Chris Paul in New Orleans, Tim Duncan in San Antonio. Howard, at age 23, arguably makes that list; Anthony, who turns 25 on Friday, is not yet there, but could. Both have work to do, but both clearly have room to grow.
And it usually takes a transcendent player to win a title in the NBA. Look at the best player or two on every championship team but one of the Magic-Bird era, beginning in 1980:Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Larry Bird, Julius Erving and Moses Malone, Isiah Thomas, Michael Jordan, Hakeem Olajuwon, Duncan, Shaquille O'Neal and Bryant, Shaq and Wade, and Kevin Garnett.
The only real exceptions would be those Thomas-led Detroit teams of 1989 and 1990, the Pistons of 2004, and arguably last year's Celtics, where Garnett was not the prototypical take-the-last-shot superstar on a team that included Paul Pierce and Ray Allen. But in an era destined to be defined by the game's young and rising superstars, it will either take a true superstar of your own -- or one hell of an ensemble-- to contend.
And in a roundabout way, this bring us back to Bosh.
This correspondent used to argue with some ferocity that if forced to decide between Anthony and Bosh, Bosh would be the pick because he was more mature, stayed out of off-court trouble, and displayed more visible dedication to the game. With Bosh, you knew what you were getting.
That, however, has become too true. Over the past four seasons, Bosh has reached an appreciable but almost dead flat numerical plateau. His points per game have been 22.5, 22.6, 22.3, and 22.7. His rebounding numbers have ranged between 8.7 and 10.7; his assist numbers between 2.5 and 2.6; his blocked shots between 1.0 and 1.3. He has shot between .487 and .505, with the number trending slightly downward each year; he has attempted 8.3, 8.6, 8.3, and 8.0 free throws per game. Oh, and he has missed 12, 13, 15 and five games, and the Raptors have not won a playoff series.
In other words, he has become an all-star, a fine and respectable player, and a 6-foot-10 metronome.
"I don't think he's going to get any better," says one NBA source who has scouted Bosh extensively. "I love him, but he is what he is -- he's a jump-shooting power forward."
Bosh was left off the league's three all-NBA teams this season, finishing 18th in the voting. The year before, when Bosh missed 15 games due to injury, he was 26th. Both times, coincidentally, he finished one spot ahead of Atlanta's Joe Johnson, a miscast No. 1 if there ever was one. The best-case scenario is that there is a leap left in Bosh, or that he can be a Garnett-like centrepiece on a team with perimeter finishers. It's not clear that either is a possibility.
Regardless, Bosh will command a maximum contract as a free agent next summer --beginning at 30% of the salary cap, whatever it is, which makes it harder to build one hell of an ensemble -- and will be forcefully pursued by more than one other team, including at least one with more immediate championship ambitions than Toronto. The big question being asked is whether the Raptors can resign their franchise player.
But that is not the only question. The other one is this: even if they can re-sign Bosh -- the team's best player, a four-time all-star, a good citizen and teammate and employee-- should they?
, I'm not sold on Griffin being an impact player in his 1st year big differance in collage vs. NBA or Boys vs. Men. Some players never make the next level. 
Just want to register strong disagreement with Rico on this. 
