Brandon Bass Day: The Upgrade

He's a bit undersized for the power forward position, so sometimes he has trouble finishing around the rim. To offset that, he makes his living on offense with the midrange jumper, which he's very efficient with. He doesn't rebound the ball very well for his position but he's a hard worker that contributes a lot on both ends of the court. The only problem is that he can be very immature at times and he once wondered openly about his role in Doc's system.

Wait, you thought I was talking about Brandon Bass? No, of course I was talking about Glen (Big Baby) Davis. I can see how you'd think that though. I mean, other than the big picture at the top of the article. The first 3 sentences actually describe them both. Not the last one though.

Perhaps it is just me, but I don't think Bass is ever going to be able to separate himself from comparisons to Big Baby. On the other hand, I'm not sure he'd want to, since the comparisons have been overwhelmingly positive lately. The Celtics basically got an upgraded version of Big Baby. I figured that was an appropriate theme here on SBNation United Day (not to mention with the release of the iPhone 5).

Bass is Big Baby without the weight problems or immaturity issues. He's a little bit better at rebounding, shooting, and scoring in general. Granted, Baby is probably a superior defender, but Bass is picking up steam in that regard as well. Also, Baby has a knack for stepping up on occasion with big games at big moments. He's kind of one of those feast or famine kind of guys (weight pun kinda intended - sorry). Whereas Bass is really more even keeled and consistent. I'll take consistently good performances over the ups and downs 10 times out of 10.

Here's the thing too. Bass is only 27 years old. When he entered the league, he was raw but he's learned a lot every year. Last year he made great strides on defense (even taking on the challenge of defending LeBron James when called upon as a last resort). Now he's had a whole season in the defensive system and this year he'll even have a few practices between games to work on things. Bottom line, he's only going to keep getting better with time. Kind of like software patches that fix bugs on a major release.

He's now got Jared Sullinger pushing him for playing time and challenging him in practice to refine his game. I can only see positives coming out of that situation because both guys are mature, hard workers that will put the good of the team before their own wants. You know, Celtics.

I'm not trying to bag on Big Baby too much. I really liked him when he was in Boston and I'm still a bit of a fan of his. I'm just kind of happy to watch him from afar rather than up close in Boston. I much prefer the upgraded version. You couldn't get me to switch back.