2010 Watch: Chris Bosh Edition

The following passage is from Dan Shanoff over at the Sporting News, during his "wake-up call" article yesterday (November 24/09)...

2010 Watch: Chris Bosh is definitely leaving the Raptors, and here's my pop psychology why: Bosh deeply resents that he is virtually anonymous playing in Canada, while other NBA stars have blown up playing in the States.

Bosh WANTS, desperately, to be a well-recognized star, and that will only happen if he is playing in New York, or alongside LeBron or Wade. LeBron and Wade may stay with their current teams; Bosh will join them -- or grab the limelight for himself in NYC. And if the Knicks accept that LeBron and Wade aren't coming to them, they should focus on Bosh, playing to his interest in being a star.

That is a mouthful and shouldn't really surprise any Raptors fans. It isn't a well-kept secret that Chris Bosh wants to test the free agent market next summer with the likes of LeBron, DWade and Joe Johnson among others, but I don't really think that they are for the reasons that Shanoff speaks of here.

Chris Bosh is not anyonymous playing in Toronto. If he was, he wouldn't be an All-Star, he wouldn't have made the USA basketball team, and he wouldn't have gotten into a war of words with Shaq.

Bosh really understands how to market himself (twitter, youtube videos) and he does it extremely well. He might have the desire to be "star" in the basketball community and that is why he does all this marketing, but it has worked. He is a known commodity and he has done it while playing basketball in Canada.

CB4 will probably end up signing with the Knicks so he can be the centre of attention when LeBron stays put in Cleveland, but he won't be any happier. What affects Bosh the most is his desire to win. Bosh only talks of leaving Toronto when the team is on a losing streak or after a bad loss when he puts up exceptional numbers, but doesn't get the support of teammates.

Bosh knows that to be more marketable you need to play for a winner and if he signs with the Knicks he will still be years away from being on a winning team. Toronto GM Bryan Colangelo has tried on a couple of seperate occasions now to put the pieces around Bosh to help him win in Toronto. This would bring the spotlight of the playoffs to him, which apparently is what he craves. Unfortunately, these experiments have failed to date (Marion, Jermaine O'Neal, Kapono). Colangelo has tried again this year, adding nine new players.

Teams vying for his service in 2010, including the Raptors, have to decide if Bosh is actually a star player who can guide a team deep in the playoffs or is he just a supporting player to a bigger star - basically, is he better suited to play Robin to Batman, instead of being Batman.

Bosh understands what being the centre of attention is like. He shares a building with the beloved Toronto Maple Leafs. He sees the hockey-crazed city and how it has treated its star players Mats Sundin and now Phil Kessel. He knows there would be a lot of pressure put on him to win when he arrives in his new destination. As much as he loves the spotlight, how would he react to getting booed at the Gardens? Could he handle the microphones being shoved in his face? Being on the back of the NY Post with the negative headlines? Those are things that are reserved for the hockey team in Toronto, not the basketball team.

The headlines he apparently craves would arrive with wins, no matter what city he is playing in.