Is Chris Bosh Soft or Have We Been Wrong This Whole Time?

With Chris Bosh, it's really not about hackneyed pronouncements, sticky proclamations or mawkish innuendo.

These things can't change the reality.

What's verifiable regarding the slashingly clever, highly productive Bosh, one of the NBA Miami Heat's "Fab Three," is that he is who he is and who he has always been. He's a twenty-and-nine guy who can blow by any of his fraternal power forward brethren, any time he wants to.

Chris Bosh is the best pure scorer currently playing the power forward position. Possibly something more, but certainly nothing less.

So, if you are a Bosh critic wondering why he's not profiling as a top-10 player, franchise-changing force, it would do you good to muse elsewhere, for your original assumptions are skewed. A substantially better Bosh may never materialize.

But Chris Bosh in his present form is a really good basketball Jones. He's a very good deal.

Yet despite his extremely high value on the court, some sports people—and it's a recognizably large enough population of droning media and Bosh's own hoopster contemporaries—contemplate and then condemn Chris Bosh constantly.

Why so much? Why do the Bosh bashers seem to want more than he can give? Why do they pontificate over him constantly, often in the most vile ways, ways unmentionable in a respectable piece such as this?

The answers to these questions are hard to fathom.

But let us try. Here is a part of one revelatory article from The Miami Herald which concisely summarized a portion of the criticism emanating from the scattered plains and various outskirts of the sports terrain, wherein Bosh detractors are held up. Perhaps this citation will provide a clue of the scoffers' rationale. Perhaps not.

"Compared to his immense talent, Chris Bosh might be the most disrespected player in professional sports. Shaquille O’Neal once described him as a drag queen; Kevin Durant called him 'a fake tough guy.' If you search Bosh’s name on Google, the results are ... less than kind."

Really? Chris Bosh? “The most disrespected player in professional sports?” Where exactly did Bosh earn all of this attention and Google-sized “disrespect.” After all, he is not intrinsically controversial in personality, like a Muhammad Ali, or a household name like A-Rod, LeBron or Tom Brady.

For most of his career he has played in Canada, for goodness' sake.

But no matter, we dig deeper. Further scoping of the basketball landscape shows published portrayals of pessimism surrounding Bosh, in this manner, from The Sun Sentinel:

"Spend a few minutes with Chris Bosh away from the court, and you're convinced this is a guy who would just as soon play the game in a sweater, with reading glasses hanging from a chain around his neck, possibly puffing on a Calabash pipe. Watch Bosh for most of his minutes on the court, and you might get the same impression of the Miami Heat power forward. Each move is measured, wasted motion minimized. He clearly has a thinking-man's approach to the game."

There are compliments in the article, but “reading glasses,” “a sweater,” puffing on a “Calabash pipe?” Karl Malone never had such phrases associated with his legacy.

Reading, relaxing [in a sweater] and romancing a pipe: such characterizations, unfortunately for Bosh, betoken the epithet most frequently and most negatively associated with his still relatively young NBA career: soft. His satirists think him softer than any Pampers ever were.

Is he?

Chris Bosh has eight years of NBA experience—for sure a determinative enough time frame to judge his play. For three of the last five years he played for the hapless, forever-mired-in-futility Toronto Raptors, up through the 2009-2010 season. Bosh averaged over 10 rebounds a game. In all five of those years, he averaged over 22 points per game.

Dirk Nowitzki has averaged 10 rebounds once; Amare Stoudemire has never averaged 10 rebounds for a full year; LaMarcus Aldridge is not even near 10 rebounds in average. No one calls these particular "power" forwards "soft."

Since Toronto, in his two years with the Miami Heat, Chris Bosh has had a rebound average which hovers at around eight per contest. However, Miami has much better fundamental players and hugely better gifted athletes than Toronto did. And the Miami team prides itself on defense and rebounding, unlike the wayward Raptors.

In Udonis Haslem, LeBron James and Joel Anthony, Miami has ample "boarders." Bosh, therefore does not need to do as much on the glass.

So, from whence the perspective "soft?" Besides the calm shadow he casts while balling, another reason for the "soft" description could be in the looking.

Chris Bosh is 6'11" and 235 pounds. Not 260 pounds. He shows in his movements on the basketball court a bit of gawkiness. In fact, he looks like a giant swooping hawk most of the time. But Bosh uses an apparently gauche attack posture to his advantage.

Many Bosh naysayers, if you can believe it, diminish him in words because they just don't like the way Chris Bosh looks. They want Bosh to be some fantasized picture of what the classic power forward should appear as—a taller Rocky Balboa.

In truth, Bosh doesn't come at you with the in-your-face style of the Tim Duncans and the Kevin Garnetts. Bosh uses his long arms, long legs—long everything—as well as a quick-burst first step, to slickly and sleekly hypnotize helpless defenders before they know what hit them.

If this is "soft," it's pretty much all good, because Chris Bosh is going to get All-Star offensive numbers in a game, while running up and down the hardwood like a deer and blocking a few shots to boot.

There are many ways to be an elite power forward. Watch Bosh and see the patience and poise of a superior scorer. No power forward sizes up a defender for the taking better than Bosh.

However, Bosh hears the deluge of denigration of his game. Lately, he approaches the knocking with ego intact, and with a revivified, more demanding self-purpose:

“It [his new perspective after the Finals loss to the Dallas Mavericks last year] was one of those things where, not only did I want to get better on the court, but I wanted to get in there in the weight room and improve my body...and just be in the best shape possible coming in[to] this season because it’s physical [in the post], and there shouldn’t be a season where I don’t average 10 rebounds.”

With Miami, in 2011-2012, Bosh has not reached his 10 rebound goal yet, but his presence is being increasingly felt every night. Bosh is augmenting his role with a title-contending team blessed with two other superstars.

An example of Chris Bosh being evidently mislabeled surfaced last Thursday night. With LeBron James and Dwyane Wade both down with injuries, Chris Bosh scored 33 points and led Miami to a victory over a progressing, quality Atlanta Hawks squad which had presented Miami with one of its only two losses of 2011-2012.

That's not "soft."

What Bosh has to do to silence the cynical, choleric, carping about his play for good is to take full charge on the court more times when LeBron and D. Wade are healthy. That is, to show that he's fully capable of being "Miami Thrice" guy numero uno. Bosh has this in mind. 

The Bosh bashers would probably like him to do a Clint Eastwood every night, such as ask his opponent "if he feels lucky," and then perform absolutely smash-mouth basketball throughout a contest. But that's not Chris Bosh's athletic personality.

Says Bosh: "I love being relaxed...I love playing basketball, and I love to win at the same time."

Bosh's personal formula is not intrinsically "soft," it's just what has garnered him upper-class success in his profession, what has gotten him career statistics of twenty-and-nine.