Santa Bosh Is Coming To Town

As the Knicks prepare to play the Raptors in just a couple of hours, we look forward to not just seeing their star, Chris Bosh, play, but hopefully persuading him to come to the Knicks in the off-season.  Jay Greenberg of the New York Post writes:

"Of the four guys (including LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Joe Johnson) generating the most drooling out of the potentially NBA landscape-altering free agent class of 2010, Bosh is losing ranking as the most likely to disappoint."

First, I’m not certain how Joe Johnson got into this group.  Joe’s a great player, but he’s more along the lines of a Michael Redd, Kevin Martin, Chauncey Billups-type.  He’s a really good player, but he’s not a true superstar who can take a team to the next level on his own.  As proof of that you can see that while he was great from the get-go for the Hawks, they didn’t make it to the playoffs until the players around him improved their games (like Josh Smith and Marvin Williams), and the team brought in new players via trades and the draft (Mike Bibby, Al Horford & Jamal Crawford).  Joe’s been great for that team, hit clutch shots, but if we swapped say him for Toney Douglas, I say we only win maybe 10 more games.  And Joe’s hit his peak.  The scary thing about LeBron, Wade & Bosh is that they’re all pretty young and still might improve.  In his post Greenberg even goes on to rightly say how Bosh has made another leap this year.

To me, if there’s a possible fourth person that belongs in this group, I’d say it’s A’m’a’r’e Stoudamire.  One could make an argument that Steve Nash makes him look good, but you could also go the other way: What if the offense revolved around Stoudamire rather than Nash?  My guess is that STAT (Standing Tall And Talented, his self-appointed nickname) would only be better.  He’s not a Shawn Marion, who pretty much never had plays called for him in Phoenix & he would just score off of offensive rebounds or kick-outs created by others).

One other thing that Greenberg says:

"There also is the question of how much better Bosh is than the emergent David Lee, an increasingly devilish offensive threat whom the Knicks already know and are learning to love more by the day."

I love David Lee, but he’s yet to command double-teams like Bosh does.  However, even if you disagree that Bosh is the better player, I don’t get why it needs to be an either-or proposition.  Lee plays center, Bosh plays power forward.  They would be a great tandem, ‘cuz both can work in the post and both can hit the outside shot.  Which also makes them a perfect fit for D’Antoni’s offense.  Bosh is also incredibly mobile for a big man, enabling him to follow in Jared Jeffries’ footsteps and be switching all the time & covering vast quantities of the court.

Of course this is all dream-talk and what-ifs.  While Bosh does seem the most likely of the Big Three to leave his current team, chances are he’d rather join a team with Wade or LeBron.  And we won’t have the $ to get two of ’em.  LeBron said he’d take less cash because winning is all that matters, but then again, last year he also said he’d definitely be in this year’s dunk contest.   People asked him repeatedly, really, are you sure?  He said yes, yes, yes.

A couple of months ago he said he’d changed his mind.

As the immortal slogan for Chuck Norris’ action extravaganza, “Delta Force,” says: Deeds, not words.