Which young PF would you want to build a team with?

DH12.

 

It's more like a distractor. A guy like Zach Randolph should definitely be there before Nene.

I'm not a particularly big fan of Bosh. He's a good player, and eventually an all-star perhaps, but I don't see him as a franchise player.

You have to go with Amare because he's one of the top 2 pieces on one of the best teams in the league, and statistically, none of these other guys can come close to comparing.

Howard's certainly off to a good start, but Amare has already shown he's a legit player in the league. I can't see Howard becoming that much better a player than Amare, and Amare is already proven.

 

No Kwame Brown or Chan Chan?

Kwame is always frustrating. His second year after he signs a big contract will tell whether he has the goods or not.

Chandlers been coddled to the point where he looks like a role player, but he has more potential than Nene or even Bosh.

 

i'd go with amare. he may be overrated on sportsenter and among nba players in general but i definitely would take him first among those guys.

 

Bosh. When you choose a guy to build a team around with, you choose the one with the most potential. Bosh is a very gifted player in that aspect. He has long arm of Tayshaun Prince, quickness of KG, athletic ability of Amare. Once he developed his post moves and his shooting range, the league better watch out.

 

Jalen Rose is scoring just as much. Since the trade, Rose has led the Raptors in scoring 13 times to Bosh's 12, and he's playing less minutes.

Bosh had a year of college- KG didn't. Compare him to Shareef Abdur-Rahim, who also had one year of college.

SAR: 36 mpg, 22.3 ppg, 7.1 rpg, 2.6 apg, .93 bpg, 1.09 spg, 3.13 tpg, 48.5% FG%
Bosh: 36.1 mpg, 16.2 ppg, 8.6 rpg, 1.9 apg, 1.26 bpg, .95 spg, 2.20 tpg, 47.3% FG%

SAR has a huge points edge and a modest edge in assists and FG%, Bosh has a good edge in rebounds, a slight edge in blocks, and a good edge in turnovers (though nearly identical AST/TO numbers). Bosh is a better defender.

I think Bosh is good, and certainly an Abdur-Rahim isn't anything to sneeze at. Perhaps I'm just turned off by the orgasms MacBeth used to have over the guy. He scored 30 points in a game for the first time this week. The things Bosh is doing don't compare to what Amare did last year, and certainly not this year.

 

I voted other, as in Wayne Simein(sp)

 

He'll be better than SAR. He's already a better defender, and he's got a great work ethic. He's sneaky in the low post, too. I don't think that he's the next Garnett, but he should be at least as good as Jermaine O'Neal, and a lot more versatile.

Stoudemire's shown, more than any of those other guys, that he has a chance to be great.

I'm not as impressed by Okafor as some of you. I don't see him developing into much more than an Othis Thorpe / Horace Grant / Elton Brand type player. I just don't think he upside is that tremendous. He should be an all-star by next year, but I don't see him as ever becoming a legit superstar.

Dwight Howard's gonna be great. He's very athletic, has long arms, a great work ethic, excellent instincts, and he's got a bigger build than a guy like Bosh. He'll be as good, if not better, than Stoudemire.

 

Bosh.

SLAM sold me on this kid. Seems like a really easy guy to root for:

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http://slamonline.com/magazine/features/Bosh87/

Chris Bosh :: Raptors' Delight

By Arash Markazi

Moments after shooting around on Air Canada Centre’s third-floor practice court and moments before he heads outside to brave the latest snowstorm that has descended upon Toronto, Chris Bosh is sitting in a deserted room in the basement of the arena. Still wearing his practice uniform, the new face of the Raptors franchise folds his hands behind his head and lets out a yawn, his mind drifting off to a subject he finds more interesting than basketball and more appealing than blizzards.


“I actually wanted to be a graphic designer,” Bosh says. “I wanted to get into web design and multimedia. I still get intrigued when I look at different websites and wonder what kind of code they put in.”

It’s a professional path that might come as a surprise to anyone who doesn’t know Bosh, but if you talk to the 20-year-old bookworm long enough, it’s easy to picture his 6-10, 240-pound frame in front of an iMac, working on his JavaScript with the same dedication he puts into his jump shot. “When I was in school, my favorite subject was math,” says Bosh, who was both a prep All-American and a National Honor Society member in high school and says he still reads at least one book a month. “I took algebra and calculus. At an early age I grasped it and understood it quickly. I just enjoyed breaking the codes and solving problems.”

The Dallas native no longer breaks codes in classrooms or computer labs, settling for the far more difficult challenge of breaking down the likes of Kevin Garnett and Tim Duncan, cats whose pictures once graced the walls of his bedroom. But his mind is still in overdrive, always thinking, always dissecting, always devouring. “I know how the game is played and I’m always working on it,” says Bosh, who led Dallas’ Lincoln High to a 40-0 record and a state title as a senior before spending one season at Georgia Tech. “I’m a pretty quick learner, and maybe basketball is just my gift so I can understand things faster. A lot of times you can’t learn things playing the game. You have to watch tape and do the scouting reports and know people’s tendencies and take advantage of them.”

Bosh has done that and more this season, taking the reins in Toronto following Vince Carter’s departure and becoming the franchise player for a franchise in desperate need of one. The No. 4 pick in the 2003 Draft after first-name-basis guys LeBron, Darko and Carmelo, Bosh admits he’d like to continue going unnoticed as he continues his steady development, but he understands that his time has already arrived—whether he likes it or not. “I sensed the pressure [after the trade], but I can’t rush myself,” he says. “I just go out there and play. I hope people take me lightly so I can come up under the radar, but that will eventually come to an end. Eventually people are going to find out I can play.”

The beginning of Bosh’s real emergence as a star-caliber player coincided with the beginning of the new year. He started 2005 by reeling off nine consecutive double-doubles, a franchise record, and becoming only the second player in team history to be named Eastern Conference Player of the Week, winning the award for the first week of January while averaging 20.5 points, 13 rebounds and 1.3 blocks. “For one week I was the best player out of all the guys in the Eastern Conference,” he says. “I thought about that for a while, and when it hit me, I was like, Wow. But I’m not the type of person to celebrate too long. I mean, they’ll name someone else next week.” What helped Bosh more than anything was that trade, which brought big men Aaron Williams, Alonzo Mourning (sort of) and Eric Williams to Toronto from New Jersey. That trade, along with the emergence of bigs Loren Woods and rookie Rafael Araujo, enabled Bosh to spend more time at his natural power forward spot after being forced to battle centers for most of his first season and a half in the League. “I’m more comfortable now at the four,” Bosh says. “Not having to rebound with a 300-pound guy on my back is a nice change.”

Aside from his averages of better than 20 and 10 in January, what has made people take notice of Bosh was the Raptors’ record: In their first 11 games of ’05, the lowly Raptors went 8-3. Not only was their future star coming into his own, he was taking his team with him. “You always want to build a team around a guy who’s about winning,” says Woods. “That’s the number one factor with Chris. He’s talented, but there’s a lot of talented guys in the NBA who don’t care about winning, and you see what kind of teams they’re on. This guy wants to win.”

Although it took Bosh and his team a few weeks to adjust to life without Carter, they have become just that—a team—since the trade. Bosh has been a huge reason why. “Through all the trade stuff, Chris was a positive figure,” Raptors wing Morris Peterson confirms. “He kept his mouth shut, made no excuses and played through it. We fed off his energy, and since the trade we’ve really begun to understand our roles and play as a team.”


After a Saturday morning practice in late January, Bosh changes from his practice jersey and shorts into a white dress shirt, jeans and Timbs and confesses that he doesn’t have any plans that night. In fact, he doesn’t have plans most nights. Bosh is an anomaly in this League. He drives a bare-bones Chevy Avalanche, which he bought after the Draft, and lives in a modest condo in downtown Toronto with his posse, which begins and ends with his cousin, Adriene Mayes, who moved with him to Toronto from Detroit. “She helps out with everything around the house,” he says. “I wouldn’t be able to manage by myself. I don’t like living by myself. It’s just the two of us and we enjoy each others’ company.”

Despite having Lottery-pick paper and knowing he’ll be due for much more in another year or two, Bosh chooses to spend his money wisely, often giving more to others than himself. One of the first things he did when he came to Toronto was start the Chris Bosh Foundation, which is run by Mayes and helps underprivileged children and the homeless in the Toronto area. “I don’t need all that material stuff,” Bosh says. “I’m real conscious about money still. That’s how I came up, and you can’t shake that.”

Bosh’s modesty and generosity have made him a favorite among both Toronto fans and his teammates, where veteran players are more than happy to follow Bosh and treat him as a grizzled vet, even though they can’t legally share a drink with him yet. “I feel he’s the second-best power forward in the Eastern Conference right now,” says Jalen Rose. “He’s a superstar in the making, on and off the floor. He’s a class guy who also happens to be a talented basketball player who can post up, shoot the ball and dribble drive. He’s going to be a problem in this League for the next 10 or 12 years, and when I’m done playing, I’ll definitely buy a ticket to check him out.”

Bosh’s development and burgeoning star status could prove vital not just to this year’s Raptors but to the team’s stability in Canada, a country that has already lost its other NBA franchise and many of its NHL teams. Following the past departures of would-be building blocks like Damon Stoudamire, Marcus Camby, Tracy McGrady and Carter, Bosh could prove to be Canada’s make-or-break star if the NBA is to truly thrive north of the border. “It’s key for us that he stays here,” Raptors General Manager Rob Babcock confirms. “He’s definitely a keeper. He’s a guy that you want to build around for the future. When you look back through the history of the League, the guys who had the most success are guys that stayed with the same team their whole careers and they’re always linked with that one team.”

To that extent, Bosh has—for the time being, at least—separated himself from his predecessors. “I can see myself in Toronto for a long time, or until they get tired of me,” he says. “I think the fans have accepted me and everybody seems to like me. It’s a good situation.”

Standing in front of his locker, Bosh admits that he never thought he’d be this good, this fast; to be honest, he didn’t even think he’d be in the League right now. “I never expected to leave college early, especially after just one year,” says Bosh, who still plans to graduate from Georgia Tech by taking classes in the offseason. “I had no idea, even during my freshman year, that I was going to leave. The first time I sensed it was the second half of ACC play, when a little buzz was going on. I would hear people saying that I could possibly leave and was thinking they were crazy.”


Bosh admits he never truly thought about leaving until he sat down with Tech coach Paul Hewitt after the season. “We had a pretty up-front and honest relationship and when Coach Hewitt told me that the highest I could go was four and the lowest was eight, I knew I had to come out. He let me know that if there was any information I needed that he would provide it for me. He wouldn’t try to hold me back.”

When he broke into the League, Bosh was rightly told that he needed to bulk up to compete with other big men, and he’s done just that, adding more than 30 pounds to his frame since Draft day. His regimen of lifting weights is combined with a diet that has him eating over 5,000 calories a day. “I don’t measure everything as much as I used to, but believe me, I’m eating a lot,” Bosh says. “It’s all healthy though—no junk food.” The fact that he heeded that advice is not lost on his teammates and coaches, who say Bosh is like a sponge when it comes to soaking up good counsel.

“He’s smart. You only need to tell him something once and he gets it,” Rose says. “That’s the thing people underestimate about this game. You can run fast and jump high, but if you don’t have the brains you just might run right up against a brick wall. He’s got the total package. He’s going to be a star and at the end of the day, one day, you’re going to hear guys say they want to be like him.”

Despite his recent success and talk around the League that he may soon become an All-Star mainstay, Bosh quickly puts things into perspective as he picks up the box score from that night’s game. “The thing that makes me know I have a long way to go is when everybody says I had a great game, and then when I look at it, I had an average game in comparison to a guy like Kevin Garnett,” Bosh explains. “I had 24 points, 14 rebounds—OK. That’s my great game, but Garnett averages that. Everyone is telling me I had a great game, but it’s a regular night for a guy like him. That let’s me know I have a lot of work to do.”

 

For me it was between Amare and Bosh.. I went with Amare. He is so quick and athletic with a mean streak, add to that youth. He has added the jumper to his weaponry and I'm sure he will develop a lot more different ways of killing teams on offense and defense. Amare sucks at rebounding because he's already at the other end of the court before the ball even hits the rim, in our offense i'm sure Amare would be getting a lot more rebounds.

 

Somewhat unrelated, but young PF Lamar Odom just said on TNT, we need a 360 degree turnaround on defense to get better.

 

This thread is pretty much driven by individual personal opinion so I'm invoking The Kidd Factor. I'm just going to recall how good KMart used to look...and subtracting that from Amare.

Gimme Bosh.

 

He put up 20-9 with Leandro Barbosa starting over half the games last year. Nash certainly helps him, but I think it's more an effect of the inflated offensive numbers by Phoenix (because of Nash).

 

Bish Bosh for me.

 

Amare has shown glimpses of greatness far before ever being teamed up with Nash. I'll never forget in his rookie season when he just absolutely destroyed Kevin Garnett and Duncan like I have never seen anyone do before. In the short run, Amare may be benefitting from having Nash as a teammate, but I really think in the long run, he would be much better off if he didn't have Nash.

He's capable of being a superstar on his own. You can't just judge him on his inability to lead the Suns last season. The chemistry for that team was just awful from the get go. Garnett, Kobe, and Mcgrady have shown that no matter how great a superstar you are, if the chemistry is not there, it's extremely tough to lead a team to success.

 

Ditto. I like Bosh.

But Amare, Okafor and D Howard are great too! Nene isnt in any of their leagues, but is a nice role player PF.