Chris Bosh: Worst 25th birthday present ever

The Chris Bosh deadbeat dad story seems best to avoid, since it involves parenting and adult responsibilities, two things that should be avoided at all costs.

However, and this is a major hair-split, describing the Raptors forward "the face of Toronto's struggling NBA franchise" seems to be laying it on a bit thick. No disrespect to Dave Feschuk at the Star, who's a hell of a yarn-spinner, but that's a little too close to the media's big canard that the Raptors franchise perpetually has one foot on a banana peel. There's no spin-doctoring that 25-45 record, but the Raptors franchise is worth rated as the 11th-most valuable in the NBA at $400 million. It's a small point, but then again, I'm a very petty person.

Bosh would not be the first warrior-poet, nor the last, to duck out on fatherhood. One shouldn't be too cavalier about this, since there's a child involved, but it's been happening since Maximus' day, and no doubt it's happened with the odd Toronto Maple Leaf or two through the years. Anyway, it's a good yarn:

"The case, perhaps, is the missing piece in explaining a sometimes puzzling decline in the on-court performance of Bosh and the Raptors. Bosh, an iconic figure in Toronto and beyond known both for his athletic prowess and his gift for starring in viral Internet videos, was proclaiming himself a candidate for league MVP in the midst of a stellar November. But Mathis filed suit on Nov. 26, 2008, and, not long after, Bosh and the Raptors fell into an abyss. Bosh, who averaged 26 points a game on 54 per cent shooting in November, averaged 21 points a game on 44 per cent shooting in December, and the team he leads, after putting together a win-loss record of 8-8 in October and November, went 4-12 for December, a stretch of abysmal play that saw coach Sam Mitchell fired and a hotly anticipated season began to disintegrate into its current tatters.

Maybe so, maybe not. A quick check at 82games.com would suggest the Raptors' drop-off from last season to this season has more to do with José Calderón and whoever is supposed to be the backup point guard.

Still a hell of a story, though.

Related:
Raptor Bosh a deadbeat dad, lawsuit says (Dave Feschuk, Toronto Star)