Player Comparisons: Is Dirk Better than Bosh?

Answer: Maybe?

Dirk is lights out and hands down the reason for the success Dallas has. He is dominant and nearly unguardable. I like him. I like to watch him play. I like his hair cut. There is no denying that Dirk is a tier 1 player and one of the best power forwards of this decade. I just don't think he is better than Bosh. I'm being a Homer and I'm not alone. A lot of people think Bosh is better than Dirk and a lot of people don't. It's nothing new. I'm just a bored blogger.... Here we go

Dirk is a German monster and NBA.com ranks him pretty high in the MVP race for the season. One spot ahead of bosh. The MVP rankings don't mean much thanks to Lebron James, but it does shine a little light on how the NBA.com writers compare Bosh to Dirk. Or perhaps more accurately Toronto to Dallas. Dirk's team wins more games.. There is a good player on every team and great players on a few teams and MVP's on winning teams. MVP's need to win games and Dallas has been winning games since Bosh was in high school. So I concede these ranks in Dirks favour. Anyways MVP rankings aside what I found interesting about the right up was the stat that compared Dirk to his PF opponents. Dirk, up until Feb 4th, has outscored his PF opponent by 10 or more points 30 times. 31 if you include the three games after. I think that's pretty impressive. Of course bosh is #2 with 23. 24 with the hurt he put on the Kings. Of course we already know that these two are premiere power forwards and when faced with opponents like Ronny Turiaf and Donte Greene, they should really be bringing the pain. So what this stat really brought to my mind is how these two pair up against each other.

In their two meeting this year:
November 7th, 2009
Dirk.

pts 29, rebs 9(0 offensive), ast 4, stls 2, Blks 1 TO 3 ... on 12-20 Shooting , 3-4 from 3pt range ,2-2 from the line , in 36 mins of play +26

Bosh
pts 26, rebs 12(6 offensive), ast 1, stls 1, blks 1, TO 3... on 8-16 Shooting , 9-11 from the line,
in 31 mins of play... he even hit a three -24

This game finished with a Dallas blowout. edge Dirk.

January 17th, 2010
Dirk
pts 19, rebs 3(0 offensive), ast 4, stls 1, blks 1, TO 1.... 9-15 Shooting, 0-1 from 3pt range,
1-4 from the line in 36 mins of play. -15

Bosh
pts 23, rebs 13(2 offensive), asts 2, stls 0 , blks 2, TO 0.....9-18 shooting, 5-6 from the line.
in 35 mins of play. +8

This game ended with a Toronto blowout leaving the season series tied at 1-1. score one for Bosh. Of course this doesn't really shed any light on who is a better player. Bosh doesn't really spend a lot of time guarding Dirk and in both those games the supporting cast for the winning team was playing extremely well. If anything it just made this comparison harder.

Now if you love John Hollinger and buy into the PER stat rankings than you know that Bosh is Ranked 4th behind James, Wade and Duncan. Nowitzki is ranked 14 just ahead of Pau Gasol. But like most people I don't really know how to make sense of that. I don't believe that Tim Duncan ,as good as he is playing, is a better player than Kevin Durant or Kobe Bryant.

I guess I'm not sure who is better.
What a great post.