Chris Bosh says Heat are still contenders, is he right?


In an interview with ESPN's Tom Haberstroh, Chris Bosh revealed that he still believes that the Miami Heat are title contenders. Let's first review his comments, then analayze:

“I think right now we have the correct infrastructure to compete for a championship,” Bosh said. “We have to get much better at certain positions, and there’s a bunch of things that have to continue to happen.

So I've been giving this a little thought and...


Of course the Heat aren't contenders, they'll be lucky to be able to land the sixth seed. In fact, they're so clearly not contenders that you read this title and immediately knew the joke.

For a while I've been wondering why Bosh wouldn't accept the deal that brought him to Houston (even before Lebron decided to return to Cleveland). Seemed like an ideal fit for their lineup, Bosh is from Texas and he'd get the ability to contend immediately. Today, Zack Lowe shed some light on the situation.

via his excellent 'Free Agency Winners & Losers' column
One last word on Bosh: He was intrigued by Houston, but he’s 30, he’s super-smart, and he just spent four years playing with two like-minded stars on an older roster for an organization that takes basketball craft seriously. The Rockets do, too, but there is an undercurrent around the league that Harden and Howard don’t represent the most appealing duo of teammates for any star who has lived within ultraserious professionalism.

Ultimately, as a basketball fan, it's still a little disappointing that Bosh didn't go to Houston to create another team capable of title contention. But its hard to completely fault the guy for not wanting to spend the next four years watching James Harden play the kind of defense that can be immortalized into a 12 minute anti-defense mix tape, and laughing at Dwight Howard's jokes.

Oh well, at least we have this: