Chris Bosh
Chris Bosh is another example of a player who spent years as a star player without much playoff success, then took a backseat in order to achieve playoff success. He's missed a lot of time over the past couple of years due to problems with blood clots, but he was one of the league's top players for several years back in Toronto. Just look at his cumulative averages over his final 5 years as a Raptor:
2005-2010 - 22.8 pts, 9.9 reb, 2.5 ast, .500 FG%, .811 FT%
Those would be pretty good averages for a single season, but those were the numbers he posted over the course of five seasons on average. Only 3 men have ever matched those numbers in a single season, and all 3 are players whose all-time ranking hasn't been revealed yet: Bob Lanier, Kevin McHale, and Larry Bird. It's pretty rare to find a big man who can also score and make his free throws, but that's what Bosh brings to the table.
When he reached Miami, all of those numbers dropped off slightly, most notably his scoring, which was 4 points lower than the average above. Many would say that it was a bad career move for him, but when you look at the bigger picture, he enjoyed more success in one year than in the rest of his career combined, reaching the NBA Finals with the Heat, which was much better than his previous best, which was losing in the first round.
But the success didn't end there. With LeBron leading the way, the Heat reached 4 straight NBA Finals, winning twice, and Bosh was the #3 player on the team throughout that time. His best postseason was his first in Miami, when he averaged 18.6 points and 8.5 rebounds. When LeBron left Miami, Bosh's averages made a nice jump, with a scoring average of 20.0 per game over the past 2 seasons, but he has missed so much time that it hasn't helped him move up the list. Hopefully he is able to regain his health so that we can see a few more good years while he is still in his late prime.
No comments:
Post a Comment