Chris Bosh sacrificed so much for the Heat. (Playoff Career High) (39pts/15rebs) vs Rashard Lewis (27pts/13rebs) (2008 Playoffs)
And he won. If you’re not the best player or the second best player, you have to adjust your game around the best players.
He was like the big man’s Iggy - just did whatever the team needed, plugged in the gaps, superstar willing to be a glue guy
Calling Bosh and Iggy superstars is crazy. Iggy had all the underrated skills—passing, great hands, and perimeter defense—but calling him a superstar is insane.
Bosh was a good post scorer with a solid jumper, but his passing and defense were weak. Man couldn’t consistently get his team to the playoffs despite playing in the weaker conference.
The PPG crowd is really trying to gas him up when, in his 11 playoff games for the Raptors, he averaged 20.5 PPG on -1 rTS
This is such an uniformed take on Bosh. I don’t think hes a superstar but he was primarily a face up scorer and has always been a solid defender.
He dragged teams that had no business being in the playoffs there multiple times. The best player he played with in Toronto was Jose Calderon who never made an all-star team. Bosh made top 10 in MVP voting and second team all-nba while there btw.
He wasn’t a superstar so your point is valid, but your reasoning makes it obvious you didn’t watch him much in Toronto.
Not crazy at all. Bosh was a star with Toronto
A star isn’t the same as a superstar unfortunately.
He was a very good isolation scorer, but he wasn’t a dominating force that’d require the defense to sacrifice elsewhere. And the team composition probably made it worse, but his defense wasn’t anything special either before he left for the Heat.
I don’t like this way of looking at things. Sure Bosh could’ve had better individual numbers, but instead he’s immortalized as a champion.
It’s a sacrifice in terms of public perception. People give a lot less credit to the third option on a championship team vs a guy who dominated for years but never got a ring (often bc you can blame the team around him).
I will say the discourse around this has gotten way better though. At the time Bosh did it it was incredibly thankless. He was constantly the scapegoat for losses.
Is he immortalized though? People already barely talk about him anymore. Harden, Westbrook, CP3, Melo, Iverson, Nash…all are way more popular in the NBA zeitgeist and don’t have rings.
I would say so. He’s attached to one of the best players ever.
Those guys are individually better than Bosh. You know this.
Maybe not melo if Bosh ascends as the #1 guy eventually but debatable.
He put up great numbers being a soft robotic elbow jump shooter on the raptors
Didn’t win much tho
Didn’t have the greatest supporting cast either. The best player he played alongside in Toronto is either Jose Calderon or Andrea Bargnani…
Looking at Bosh as an example, im turning to Philly trying to figure out who the guy designated for sacrifice is.
Depth is important, but they have 4 ball dominant players, someone is going to take a dip in counting stats this year.
I mean the answer is Embiid right? Lessen his load in the reg season so he could be primed for a deep playoff run
I can definitely see Embiid being the least of the issues.
My big thing is Maxey, LeBron, and Brown. All 3 need the ball, npne of the 3 are spot up guys. None of the 3 are strong defenders at this point either.
Id imagine Maxey is the guy taking the L, and hes the worst defender of the 3. You’re taking his strength and mitigating it, while holding onto his biggest weakness.
Maxey does not need the ball - you’re way off base with that assessment and it’s probably the thing clouding your judgement of the whole situation.
He is way better at catch and shoot than pull shots over the last 3 years: 42.9% catch and shoot VS 32% pull up.
Plus his back cuts are great - he doesn’t need the ball to be effective. And generally when you get great players together that are willing to sacrifice and play without the ball good things happen. This team is talking the talk. Let’s see if they can pull it off.
I think most Philly fans would say Maxey plays really well off ball. Edgecombe’s skill set makes him a terror off ball. Lebron’s has shown he can play well off ball or be a distributor.
JB and Embiid are probably the ones who will have to adjust the most. And just because you have all of those players doesn’t mean you have to play them all together all of the time.
Basketball isn’t that complicated. Every Olympics we see a team full of ball dominant players somehow figure it out.
Embiid is a good off-ball player. Good screener, great roller, elite mid range popper, amazing fake hand-offs with Maxey in their 2-man game. Also unironically elite in late shot clock cheese shots so anyone can probably just chuck the ball to him if they need to beat the shot clock.
Id honestly be more concerned about LeBron and Brown dominating the ball. LeBron is a heliocentric player, one of only a handful of guys able to make that work. Between LeBron and Luka missing so much time, we really didnt see it clash but its one of the reasons LeBron left LA.
Brown led the league in 2PA last year. If you ask him hes been referring his entire career.
Taking the ball out of Maxey’s hands is rough, because hes not really a spot up guy, hes an off the dribble scorer. Hes also terrible defensively, so you’re going to neutralize his offensive strengths while maintaining bad defense. Even if you give the ball to Maxey in a big way, youre then setting LeBron and Brown in the corners as spot up guys?
Embiid and Edgecomb im not so worried about, Embiid is 32 and is likely shifting his playstyle and doing less might be good.
I dont want to come off like a hater, I just and curious how these guys can gel.
Fun fact, across the past 3 seasons, LeBron has the best 3pt % off of all 4. He’s smart enough to figure it out
lol you do realize that even prime Lebron had a lower usage than Kyrie? Last year he was 3rd in usage behind AR and Luka and he performed VERY well even with a shot that was off due to no offseason
LeBron is not a heliocentric player. He is a mismatch hunter, both for himself and others
Brown literally succeeded at the highest level with another costar who dominated the ball as well, he’s been good off ball. Maxey is very much one of the better off ball guards, who needed to play on ball last year due to injuries
I actually think most of those dudes can play off ball really nicely.
Thats not really what im saying. They all have some ability to play off the ball (not LeBron so much). Being able to play off the ball and HAVING to play off the ball are different things.
In theory, its a luxury, but when they all actually hit the court, somebody is standing in the corner while other guys trade ISO attempts.
You don’t think LeBron can play off ball?
So you haven’t watched LeBron play basketball for the last 2.5 years
(not LeBron so much)
Fun fact over the past 3 seasons, LeBron has the best 3pt% out of all 4, in addition to being one of the smartest to ever play the game
He sacrificed for himself as well. He was never going to win a championship as the main guy.
Proof what a championship can do for your reputation. Bosh was the 2000’s equivalent of Bradley Beal, decent stats but almost never made the playoffs as the #1 option and whenever he did he would be swept in the first round
But now he wins a championship and is talked of as a “superstar who sacrificed to win it all”
I get what you mean but Bosh was a two way player and never played with anyone as good as John Wall or Russell Westbrook
Spo said the other day knowing what he knows now he wouldn’t have ran the offense for the big three that he did back then and I wonder how differently Bosh wouldve been used
Bryan Colangelo really held on to his Italian pride instead of signing literally any center to play beside Bosh instead of Bargnani
He got 2 Rings he probably would never have and he Got Taken care of on the backend after Lebron left with a nice deal before his Career ending blood clots. if not for those 4 years in Miami he wouldn’t have 2 rings and even if he had the stats more tha likely wouldn’t be looking at the HOF with a shortened career by today’s standard.
Calling it sacrifice is a stretch.
Bosh absolutely makes HOF off his 7 years with raps plus 4 allstar seasons elsewhere
Hell yeah man, I loved raptors Bosh. Dude was fierce from the elbow
Left us to win and then did, can’t hate. I’m a bosh fan for life
Chris Bosh was a top 12-20 player in the league when he joined the Heat.
Had he been in a bigger USA market with the media coverage that goes along with it - or had a better team around him - he’d have been thought of as a better player prior to the Heat.. He was also in that weird F/C mix, where he got slotted as either instead of being one or the other permanently during a time where roles were more “defined,” which also split votes.
He joined the Heat as a 5 time all-star already, and definitely took a step back to allow the others to shine.
More like a trade off instead of a sacrifice considering how much he got in return
It’s the whole idea of Devin Booker and being a premier support role when asked.
On his own, he is really good. Superstar status. But his skill set is premier when he is in a support role (see the Olympic teams). Always on the floor in those critical moments and plays smart in his role, rarely makes a poor decision, allows the scorers to operate and can be an outlet when necessary.
Almost like one of the best support players in the world, which is a skill set not all superstars have and I think Bosh fits into that as well.
Not everyone can play those roles well and being really good at that support role is what brings teams to the finish line.
Players I think of in those roles are Booker, Bosh, Manu, Bam. Like guys that are great but are premier when they are tasked with a supporting role.
It’s so hard to not make this sound like a slight, it’s not supposed to be, being an effective role player is critical. If the primary scorers get doubled and Book is open at the 3, he’s probably expected to make that 3 more so than the primary scorers.
Bosh had everything. He would feast in the modern NBA and was a footprint for bigs to stretch the floor. Shame how his career got cut shot. Good barometer of basketball knowledge is how people view bosh, if you see people calling bosh overrated, you can avoid having basketball convos with them again
People forget Bosh was 20, 10 guy on the Raptors.
Glad someone is recognizing it at least