What Chris Bosh doesn’t seem to understand: He won’t be a celebrity anywhere else he goes in the NBA. Especially if he goes to a team with LeBron James or Dwayne Wade. He’ll just be the other guy. There won’t be companies wanting him to do DVDs or CDs or whatever the latest technology is. Here, he matters. Somewhere else, not so much. – Steve Simmons, Toronto Sun, June 7, 2009
Even if we’re to buy into the notion Chris Bosh is a universally revered celeb in Toronto, does Simmons honestly believe Bosh’s Q-rating/earning power will be higher continent-wide as the top banana in a hockey city…compared to say, being a prominent figure on a team with a chance to contend? Wouldn’t lifting a trophy — even if he did so alongside a bigger star — do more to elevate Bosh’s profile than a Warners Canada compilation CD? GM’s all over the NBA are jealous of Bryan Colangelo ; where can they find their own local columnist to so blatantly shill for the hometown team?
Not to be too much of a pedant, but you do a real injustice to the Star: they have their own terrible writers, but Simmons writes for the Sun.
I’ll admit to a) not being a big NBA fan, and b) mostly rooting for the Lakers when I care about the NBA (since I’m from LA). So I’m honestly asking if, for example, Pau Gasol is more famous now that he’s Kobe’s “other guy” than he was in Memphis. He seems more famous to me now, but I don’t know.
You mean he writes for a newspaper? Should have just gone with “SLAM! Sports’ Steve Simmons.”
(He spews nonsense quite reliably but is certainly entertaining. Plus didn’t he once have a fistfight with another hockey writer on team plane?)
apologies for the error…linked to another SImmons Sun item earlier and should’ve caught this.
Seitz, you’re making my very point. Gasol played (a pretty good) game on a rather large stage tonight. If he was still the franchise player for Memphis (the way Bosh is for Toronto), I dunno how he’d have spent his Sunday evening but presumably fewer people would’ve cared.
Yeah, that’s kinda what I was trying to do. I mean, here’s a shining example of why this guy is wrong on a grand stage, but he apparently doesn’t get it.