LeBron James has begun his championship defense and Dwyane Wade is (so far successfully) trying to knock off the East’s No. 1 seed. If those two figured out life in the playoffs, the third member of this era’s first Big Three is figuring out life itself.
Chris Bosh, who last appeared in a game on Feb. 9, 2016, proclaimed he “thinks” he will return to the NBA one day, and then proceeded to explain why that comeback won’t happen.
Bosh, now 33, was interviewed on the “Larry King Now” show on the Ora.tv digital network Sunday, popping up as the playoffs kick off and revealing what a life without basketball has been like. Recurring blood clots derailed his 2014-15 and 2015-16 seasons and have mostly cast him out of the Heat organization. The issue can be life-threatening, and the team’s hope has been Bosh will retire; a return would ruin Miami’s salary-cap situation. Bosh said he misses the game and intends to return, but he sounded like a person who’s enjoying life after basketball.
“At heart, I’m still an athlete, and that is not how I want it to end,” said Bosh, whose contract gives him about $52 million over the next two seasons — from which the Heat can apply for relief because he’s sidelined with a medical condition.
“I do [miss playing],” he said. “But a part of me doesn’t. I’ve come to enjoy different aspects of life. There’s a lot of life out there. I mean [that] only because as basketball players – that’s really it. But I’ve enjoyed spending time with my kids. I’ve enjoyed spending time with my wife and just kind of relaxing and working on my mind and my soul.”
And his body, which he’s working on by not putting it in grave danger by playing. Bosh did not divulge much about his health.
“It’s complicated,” he said. “It’s very, very complicated and that’s why I haven’t been able to play this year.”
Heat president Pat Riley has said, perhaps trying to will it to be true, the team does not expect Bosh to return. He hasn’t been around a team that’s now a shell of the squad with which Bosh won two NBA titles, when the Heatles were the reigning super-team. Bosh originally rebelled against Riley, who Bosh felt was exploiting his condition for salary-cap savings. Now, he seems more at peace with not being a member of the Heat, who just missed out on being the No. 8 seed.
“Yeah, I understand what they have to do as a team,” said Bosh, who stayed around the sport as a TNT studio analyst late in the season. “It is a business. I know we — as athletes and owners and people involved with the NBA — never want to say it’s a business, and things like that. It’s a business. And hurt does come in with that. But as president of the Miami Heat, I understand what he has to do.”
Bosh was asked what’s next for him.
“I don’t know,” he said. “And that’s exciting. It’s always this kind of pressure as an athlete, people [asking], ‘What are you going to do? And you should do this? Or you should do that?’ I think it’s OK to say, ‘I don’t know what I want to do.’ I have a lot of things on my mind.”