Bosh vs Garnett - A Player Comparison

Another little tool available at basketball-reference.com is the player comparison finder. It allows you to compare say Lebron James and Michael Jordan at age 24, or maybe Kobe and MJ through the age of 28. I used it to compare Chris Bosh and Kevin Garnett.

There are some natural parallels between these two players that made the comparison relevant. Consider:

• Style: Both are tall, lanky power forwards who are more comfortable facing the basket than posting their defender up
• Circumstance: Garnett was a 19-year old drafted fifth overall; Bosh a 19-year old drafted fourth overall. However, almost instantly, Garnett became the star of the '95 draft class, while Bosh has struggled to get out from the shadow of the big three of '03 (LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony, Dwyane Wade)
• Team Success: Through the first six years of their career, neither player has/had made it past the first round of the playoffs. However, Garnett had made the playoffs five times (his teams were 6 games above .500), while Bosh has made the playoffs just twice (64 games below .500)

Anyways, so there are some natural parallels. And I think the prevailing wisdom would be to say that there's no way Bosh compares to the player Garnett was or is. Do the numbers agree?

RAW STATS

• Health: Garnett appeared in 41 more games (almost 7 per season)
• Court time: Both averaged 37 minutes per game
• Scoring: Bosh (19.6) with a slight edge over Garnett (18.5)
• Rebounding: Both grabbed about 9 rebounds per game (incl. identical 2.7 off. rebs)
• Passing: Garnett (3.9) with a fairly significant edge over Bosh (2.2)
• Shooting: This is weird. Both shot 48.7% from the field. I mean, they both took over 6000 shots from the field, and they have the exact same field goal percentage.
• Free Throws: Bosh with a big edge in attempts (7 to 4) and slight edge in accuracy (79% vs 75%)
• Defence: Garnett wins in blocks (1.8 to 1.2) and steals (1.4 to 0.8)

ADVANCED STATS

• They are nearly identical rebounders (14.5% reb. rate for Bosh, 14.7% for Garnett)
• Bosh with a slight edge in turnover rate (11% vs 12%)
• Had the same usage rate (24%). It is a rough measure of how often the ball is in a player's hands
• Thanks mostly to free throws, Bosh has edge in True Shooting percentage (56% to 52%)
• Bosh a more refined offensive player (113 to 107 offensive rating)
• Garnett a more active defender (102 to 106 defensive rating)
• This produces a nearly identical Player Efficiency Rating (Bosh: 20.7; Garnett 20.9)

DISCUSSION

Given the reputations of Bosh and Garnett, this is a surprising result. I don't think many people would have thought that Chris Bosh was on a nearly identical career path as Kevin Garnett. Some would say that Garnett's team success over this time period trumps the closeness of the individual results, but we said before that regardless of a few decent regular seasons, Garnett did not have a deep playoff run on his resume. Regardless, I think you can boil down these results into one concise thought:

Chris Bosh knows how to score better than Kevin Garnett, however in all other aspects of the game, Garnett holds a distinct advantage.

Now, this makes it sound as if we're saying Garnett is a much better player, however scoring is a huge part of basketball (obviously, the most important aspect of the sport).

This becomes a very important point when you look at the next phases of Garnett's career.

WHAT COULD LIE AHEAD

Garnett's age 25 year was similar to his first six, but what followed were four amazing individual seasons (including an MVP award). He essentially took a leap from one of the top 15 players in the game to one of the top 5.

The key question is: If Garnett did it, and if his career path is so similar to Chris Bosh, does that mean Bosh is capable of a similar leap? Well.... it depends.

Garnett's production in his peak years (ages 26-29) increased across the board. Rebounding, assists, blocks, steals... everything hit career highs. However, the key to his mind-boggling PERs was that he became what Bosh already is offensively: efficient. Essentially, MVP Garnett was the combination of young Garnett and young Bosh.

So why is the answer "it depends." Well, this is just a personal opinion, but I think it's much easier for players to refine their scoring as they get older and improve that part of their game than it is for a player who is gifted offensively to suddenly become a great all-around player.

Let's not sell Bosh short here though. We're not talking about Danny Manning or Glen Rice or someone who is totally out of it defensively. As we said, Bosh and Garnett were fairly similar rebounders when they were younger. So he clearly has the athleticism to be a good rebounder and defender. But it's the other things that might be hard to add to his game. The nice passing, the off-ball defence, the poke away steals when he's playing post defence... it's those types of things that reflect a high basketball IQ, and I'm still not sure if Bosh has those ingredients which would be required to make a Garnett-like leap.

CONCLUSION

I think I was as guilty as the next person when it came to selling Chris Bosh short. This player comparison opened my eyes to how good he has been through the first six years of his career. One of my tried and tested ways of evaluating Bosh last season was saying "he is what he is." If you looked at his career numbers, it looked as if he had peaked or plateaued already as a NBA player. But this comparison shows that a player just like him took a leap at age 26, so maybe we shouldn't evaluate the modern NBA player so quickly. I think a big thing that's forgotten with modern NBA players is how old (or young) they really are. If Bosh played four years of college ball, he would be just a three-year NBA veteran right now.

Do I think Bosh will ever win an MVP award? No, probably not. But I think there's a whole lot of people who are ready to say goodbye to Bosh come 2010, and maybe they should re-think that position after reading this.