After snubbing Chris Bosh last year, here’s why Hall of Fame won’t deny him this time | Opinion

It might be a stretch to apply the words underrated or even underappreciated to Chris Bosh’s basketball career. Only 35 players in NBA history have made the all-star team at least 11 times. Bosh is one.

And yet, when a player achieves his greatest success on a Miami Heat team that includes neon superstars LeBron James and Dwyane Wade, well, there is never a doubt who gets cast as the third of the Big 3.

The idea that Bosh has never quite gotten his full due was underlined a year ago.

He took a gut punch. One he didn’t expect.

Not only was Bosh denied the distinction of being a first-ballot Hall of Famer last year in his first year of eligibility — he didn’t even make the list of finalists. It stunned those in the Heat organization. To not even be a finalist was a hard, blindside slap. An insult.

“I’m not going to lie, man,” Bosh said then. “I’m disappointed that I didn’t even get considered.”

The Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, based in Springfield, Massachusetts, won’t make the same mistake twice when the 2021 Hall class is announced Sunday.

Bet the farm on that. Then take out a loan and bet that money, too. Bosh getting in this time seems that certain.

And is that deserved.

This time, Bosh is one of 14 finalists including seven former NBA players, and only Boston great Paul Pierce is considered as likely to get in.

“Words cannot express the feeling,” he said.

With the Miami Heat from 2010 to 2016 in a 13-year career, Bosh was such an indispensable part of the 2012-13 championships that James and Wade have said there would not have been those two parades down Biscayne Boulevard without him.

Coach Erik Spoelstra said he thought Bosh should have first a first-ballot Hall inductee last year. His current Heat had won three in a row entering Thursday night’s regular-season home finale vs. Philadelphia. Miami will end the regular season Sunday, the same day the Heat hope to cheer Bosh’s good news.

“He makes it look easy and he makes it look quiet,” Spo once said of Bosh in the midst of the BIg 3 run. “He is our most important player.”

Repeat those last six words if you need to.

He is our most important player.

Bosh getting snubbed last year was in part a matter of timing, and the extraordinary company he kept. NBA giants Kobe Bryant, Tim Duncan and Kevin Garnett fronted the 2020 class, and one could argue Bosh may have not been quite on that level. (He still should have gotten in with them).

The ‘20 class will be inducted Saturday in a ceremony delayed to this year because of COVID-19. Bryant of course will go in posthumously, 16 months after the helicopter tragedy that took nine lives including Kobe and daughter Gianna. Michael Jordan will present him for induction, with Kobe’s widow Vanessa a part of it.

Bosh and Paul Pierce lead the seven former NBA players among this year’s finalists, joined by Michael Cooper, Tim Hardaway, Marques Johnson, Ben Wallace and Chris Webber.

Hardaway, popular point guard for the Heat in 1996-2001, does not enjoy the near-certainty of Bosh or Pierce but might have his best shot at finally getting in, too. He has been denied each of his 13 years of eligibility since retiring in 2003, which he has blamed on a 2007 controversy over homophobic comments he made on a national radio show. (He quickly apologized and has since become an outspoken advocate of LGBTQ rights).

Based on basketball-reference.com’s Hall of Fame probability metric, Pierce is at 99.7 percent, Bosh at 99.5 and Hardaway at 79.2. Among the others, Wallace is at 45.3 percent, Johnson 25.2, Webber 14.6 and Cooper 1.2..

Bosh and perhaps Hardaway would become the fifth and sixth former Heat players enshrined, joining Alonzo Mourning, Shaquille O’Neal, Ray Allen and Gary Payton. Pat Riley is in, too, of course.

Mourning would be the only one of the former Heat players to have played the majority of his career for Miami, based on total games played. Dwyane Wade will join Zo in that exclusive group when D-Wade sails in as a certain first-ballot guy in 2023.

Bosh’s towering resume’ is beyond dispute as Hall-worthy.

The 6-11 power forward/center was a 19.2 career scorer and still in his prime when blood clot issues forced his premature retirement in 2016.

“I still wanted to be playing to this day,” says Bosh, now 37. “I put my heart and soul into the game.”

Of those 35 players in NBA history to make the all-star team 11 times, 31 are in the Hall and LeBron is still playing. The other three? Dirk Nowitzki, Wade and Bosh.

His career was Hall-bound from his seven seasons in Toronto even before the upward trajectory of the move to Miami. The Basketball Hall of Fame considers accomplishments beyond the NBA, so Bosh’s resume’ also is feathered by his ACC Rookie of the Year honor his only season at Georgia Tech, along with his Olympic gold medal with the 2008 U.S. “Redeem Team.”

His having been an exemplary role model, an engaging personality, a selfless teammate and a funny dude who would playfully video bomb teammates during postgame interviews — those things don’t matter in whether he makes the Hall of Fame.

They just make you that much happier when he finally does.