If you look at the All-Star voting so far, voting that only determines the starters, you'd probably start to wonder if Chris Bosh is going to get left off the roster come Feburary.
LeBron James and Dwyane Wade are leading their respective positions, but Bosh is fifth in his, behind James, Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce and Amare Stoudemire.
Now, do all those other players deserve to be on the All-Star team? Stoudemire certainly does, but probably at center, where he's played practically all season. Garnett was an MVP candidate, and should he come back in decent form this month, probably deserves the nod, too. Pierce still leads the Celtics in scoring, and probably still deserves a nod, too.
But Bosh is at least equally as deserving as Pierce, if not more so.
For the season, Bosh is up to 18.4 points, 8.2 rebounds and shooting 51 percent. Pierce is at 19 points and 50 percent, with less rebounds but more assists.
And if you needed a reminder of just how good Bosh actually is -- which can get lost when you watch LeBron and Wade next to him every night -- just watch games when he's the only one of the Big Three on the floor.
It happened in the second quarter against the Bucks on Tuesday. Erik Spoelstra changed things up and started the second period with Bosh on the floor and James and Wade on the bench.
With all the attention on him, Bosh still earned four free throws, used a sweet spin move for a bucket with the shot clock ticking down and followed that with a tough bucket while getting fouled (he missed the ensuing free throw).
He probably could've gone that way all night long (the Bucks had a smallish Ersan Ilyasova or a slow-ish Jon Brockman on him almost all night), but of course Wade and LeBron re-entered the game eventually, so he settled for 19 and 12 with two steals and no turnovers.
There looks to be room for Bosh on the East roster, and in all likelihood, he'll get a spot. Assuming the Heat can maintain the top record in the conference, there's no way the coaches will only take two players from this team. Not when Bosh is so important to what the Heat does.
Bosh doesn't have to lobby for a starting spot (he probably wouldn't leap frog Pierce, Garnett and Stoudemire anyway), but if he did, it would probably look something like this...
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