Is Chris Bosh, Rather Than Pau Gasol, The Best Big Man In The NBA?

Since being traded to the Los Angeles Lakers from the Memphis Grizzlies in 2008, Pau Gasol has experienced a career renaissance in helping lead the Lakers to three consecutive Finals appearances and two back-to-back championships.  Prior to trading for Gasol, the Lakers had struggled for three seasons, missing the playoffs in 2005, and being eliminated in the first round of the NBA Playoffs in 2006 and 2007. 

Now lately, there has been much talk about Gasol as being one of the best power forwards/centers in the NBA, with even President Obama commenting that he was the "best big man in the league right now" in his interview with Marv Albert broadcast on TNT in May.

But is all this talk about Gasol misguided?  After all, Gasol plays for the best team in the league, with superstar Kobe Bryant, arguably the best player in the game today.  

And when you compare the numbers of Gasol against the numbers of other big men in the NBA, that's when the argument of Gasol being the "best big man in the league" starts to fall apart.     

In comparing Gasol with Miami Heat forward Chris Bosh, for instance, Pau has never averaged more than 20.8 points per game, while Bosh has exceeded that for every year after his 2nd season. Pau's career points average is 18.8 while Bosh's is 20.2. In just this past year, Pau averaged 18.3 points per game while Bosh averaged 24.

 

In terms of rebounding, before this season, Pau never averaged 10 rebounds per game while Bosh has done that for three seasons in his seven season career. Keep in mind Pau only played 65 games this season, which disqualifies him from even being counted in terms of NBA rebound leaders for the season, of which the minimum games played is 70. Career-wise, Pau has averaged 9 rebounds per game while Bosh has averaged 9.4. Bosh was also the only NBA player this year to be in the Top 10 in both points per game (#9) and rebounds per game (#6).

 

An argument could be made, however, that Pau is a better passer, and his assists average supports this, with him averaging 3.4 last season compared to 2.4 for Bosh.

 

Now one could suggest that it isn't fair to compare Gasol's scoring with Bosh's because Pau is only the second offensive option on his team while Bosh was "the man".

 

But what one would be forgetting is that Pau was "the man" on his team for his first six and a half seasons, similar to Bosh's first seven seasons, when Gasol played on the Grizzlies.  During that time, Pau's highest scoring average was during his last full season there, when he scored 20.8 points per game and grabbed 9.8 rebounds. For Bosh's sixth season, he scored 22.7 points per game and grabbed 10.0 rebounds, both better numbers than what Pau put up.

 

More telling is that even though Bosh won a meager three playoff games during his seven seasons as "the man" on the Raptors, Pau won zero playoff games during his 6 full seasons on the Grizzlies as "the man", despite appearing in the playoffs three times. Yes, he was swept three times out of the playoffs and never won a playoff game until he joined the Lakers. So to argue that Gasol was a bigger "winner" when he was "the man" on his team would be incorrect.

 

Keep in mind that the only really interesting comparison that we can make between Gasol and Bosh will be after this upcoming season, when they are both playing on good teams and are not the primary scoring options on bad teams.  How they perform in both their statistics and overall contributions to their teams in terms of wins and playoff runs will be much more telling than trying to compare their early careers, or Pau's career on the championship Lakers to Bosh's career on the bottom-feeder Raptors.

But given that Gasol's numbers do not stand up to Bosh's, even when he was the primary scoring option on the Memphis Grizzlies, it would be unrealistic to award Gasol the title of being the "best big man in the NBA".  And taking into consideration the other elite big men in the league, including Dwight Howard, Yao Ming, Amare Stoudemire, Dirk Nowitzki, Tim Duncan, and even Kevin Garnett, it becomes even more difficult to make that claim. 

And with the emergence of Andrew Bynum on the Lakers, if he can stay healthy, Gasol may not even be the best big man on his team for long.