BasketballChris Bosh: all-star?

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Chris Bosh (1) may end up being the odd man out when it comes to Miami Heat all-star selections for 2011. (Andrew M. Bernstein/Getty Images)

Chris Bosh told a Miami reporter this week that he thinks he should be an NBA all-star this season.

Chris Bosh also once said Toronto "smelled different" than the United States.

Actually, let's be fair here for a second. It's unlikely Bosh will be voted in this season, given that he's currently trailing teammate LeBron James, Kevin Garnett and Amar'e Stoudemire in voting for East forwards. However he does play for a marquee squad that has lost only one game since the end of November.

While individual scoring stats are lower across the board in Miami by virtue of the superfriends, the main thing noticeably down from Bosh's game this year has been rebounding, which he still leads the team with at 8.2 per game.

Does he deserve an all-star berth? Potentially. That's what star power on a good team in the NBA will do for you.

Hollywood hardwood drama

Aside from the breakup of Mila Kunis and Macaulay Culkin (they were actually together for eight years?), the most arresting news out of Hollywood this week was tales of trouble in Lakerland.

L.A. had lost four of six going into Tuesday's tilt with Detroit, and the Lakers had been outscored a rather shocking 396-346 in their last four games at home (which included defeats to Memphis and Milwaukee).

In the sort of media frenzy reminiscent of what goes on in the New York Yankees locker room, after being forced to clarify Monday that Kobe Bryant "cranks up" and doesn't "screw up" the Lakers offence, Phil Jackson admitted that there may be too many current off-court distractions with several players on his team.

In addition to Ron Artest being Ron Artest and Lamar Odom's alliance with the Kardashian clan, Bryant has been under fire for recent endorsements, specifically a politically loaded one with Turkish Airlines and his appearance holding an assault rifle in a Call of Duty ad.
Bryant himself admitted Monday that the Laker teams that three-peated in the early 2000s suffered from far worse strife, such as his feud with O'Neal. But as Jackson proved in those days, if he's a master at anything other than coaching the triangle, it's managing egos.
The only difference was with Shaq in his prime then, those teams were better.

The next step

Raptors swingman DeMar DeRozan is starting to take the next step in his evolution. I won't hold my breath on whether he develops into an elite-level wing guy, but Raps fans have to take good news where they can get it, and his play lately has been promising.

Losing Andrea Bargnani for a spell created a desperate need for certain Raptors to score, and DeRozan for the most part has been there. While they were both losses, DeRozan showed more aggressiveness and scored 27 and a career-high 37 against Boston and Houston respectively.

Even on the nights when he hasn't put up 20-plus, he's been shooting almost 53 per cent in Toronto's last six games going into Tuesday night.

While DeRozan is still prone to defensive breakdowns, that's fixable because he's still only 21 and he's not Bargnani. After Sunday's loss to the Celtics, Raptors coach Jay Triano also reminded people of that other NBA rite of passage: That if DeRozan keeps playing hard and producing, he'll start getting calls from refs come his way.

In terms of the Raptors as a team, they've lost 11 of 16 going into Chicago. But they're also the only sub-.500 team in the top five scoring clubs in the Eastern Conference, although not unlike last year, that comes hand-in-hand with being in the bottom three in points allowed.

It remains tempting to think how the Raps would have looked had the Tyson Chandler-for-Jose Calderon deal happened last summer, because the first thing you can envision the Raptors needing right now is a defensive big man.

Big Baby shrugs it off

One defensively sound NBA big man is Boston's Glen Davis. However on the offensive end, while you'd expect his body type - six-nine, 290 pounds (listed) - to provide the Celtics with more of a banger, Big Baby is insistent on what he prefers doing. "[I will] do what I've been doing all season," he said before Sunday's Celts-Raps game. "And that's shooting the ball."

Now starting in place of the injured Kevin Garnett, he says C's coach Doc Rivers likes him taking shots and shrugs off opinions from the Boston sports blogosphere that he does it too often.

"It's amazing how people just think 'wow, why did he take that shot,' ... or 'he's selfish,'" said Davis. "If I have to take a shot, I'll take it all the time."

With Garnett's injury, and after going 3-3 following a 14-game winning streak, Boston needs to try and conserve their ancient legs for the post-season. Although his minutes have dropped since, Shaquille O'Neal showed in November he can still play at age 38, failing to demonstrate so far the typical symptoms of sudden aging NBA big man syndrome, such as loss of hands (see Hakeem Olajuwon, 2001-02).

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