I can’t tell if Charley Rosen is being serious about Chris Bosh in this article because the piece has an air of harshness about it while at the same time having elements of pure truth. You decide. When you rank the top PFs in the NBA the list inevitably narrows down to the likes of:
Tim Duncan
Kevin Garnett
Elton Brand
Carlos Boozer
Chris Bosh
Amare Stoudamire
David West
and reaching into the C/PFs:
Dirk Nowitzki
Paul Gasol.
Where Bosh ranks in this list is debatable, obviously Tim Duncan is the cream of the crop and David West hasn’t been good for long enough to claim title to being “the best” but the rest of the PF crew remain very comparable. Bosh’s main advantage over everyone else on that list is quickness but that is offset by his lack of a post-up game, something which is almost unseen of PFs. I like the following quote from Rosen:
“He’s really an outsized small forward with excellent rebounding skills.”
There’s no doubt that Bosh is an unorthodox power forward which relies on his quickness/length more than his size/low-post game, much like Dirk Nowitzki except that the latter has developed his game to be of an all-round variety with the only lacking area being defense. Rosen is right, Bosh might be a tweener who’s tweening between being a SF and PF but there’s no team that’s ready to call him a SF just yet.
I look at this unique tweeneyness of Bosh as being an advantage. Aside from Kevin Garnett nobody in the NBA can stay with Bosh based on lateral quicks which is a fact the Raptors need to exploit more (no jumpers). But at the same time when the likes of Trenton Hassell have success shutting you down its time to expand your game into the low-post so that opposing teams are forced to match not only your quickness but also your strength in order to stop you.
In other news 1300 tickets will go on sale for the club’s intramural game on October 4th at Carleton University in Ottawa. If you’re in the area, check it out.
