Chris Bosh played competitive basketball today for the first time in eight years, making a brief appearance during Goran Dragic‘s retirement game to honor his former teammate. The Hall of Famer starred for Toronto and Miami during 13 NBA seasons before a blood clot issue brought his career to a premature end. After logging a couple of minutes in Saturday’s contest, Bosh spoke to Mindaugas Bertys of BasketNews about the medical condition that forced him to retire.
“It was very tough,” Bosh said. “It was the death of my career, to be honest. Any time dealing with loss and death and stuff like that, you go through grief. I had to do that for a few years. I got over it. I believe it made me stronger. It made me focus on being more of a father.”
Bosh and Dragic spent a season and a half as teammates with the Heat after Dragic was acquired at the 2015 trade deadline. Bosh won two championships in Miami and played in four NBA Finals after signing there along with LeBron James in the summer of 2010.
Bosh is an 11-time All-Star who averaged 19.2 points and 8.5 rebounds in 893 career games. He was elected to the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in 2021.
Although Bosh would have preferred to play longer, he told Bertys that he has positive memories about his NBA career.
“It all went good,” he said. “A couple of championships. Got to meet some great people, have some great teammates, great stories, great locker rooms. I’m a lucky guy.”
Bosh revealed that he had an opportunity to play in Europe after the NBA refused to give him medical clearance, per Cesare Milanti of Eurohoops. However, he decided it was best to end his career and not take any health risks.
“I wasn’t in a position where I wanted to up and move my family. I had babies at the time,” Bosh said. “I took it as a sign and continued to move on. But I had a couple of offers. It wasn’t Greece. Spain, France. In the EuroLeague.”
Dragic’s team prevailed as he thrilled the Slovenian crowd with 21 points, 11 rebounds and seven assists, Milanti adds in a separate story. The star-studded contest featured Nikola Jokic, Luka Doncic, Luis Scola, Dirk Nowitzki, Bogdan Bogdanovic and Steve Nash.
There was also a one-on-one game between Dragic and his brother Zoran with their parents serving as referee and scorekeeper.
The way he celebrated even making a simple free throw in a celebration game tells you how much he missed it…..
Imagine if he got to play with Dragic and Butler and Bam.. that 2020 bubble woulda been very different
What if Wade was part of that scenario too? If he hadn’t retired himself just a year before the Bubble that would have made for a pretty fearsome five even with Bosh & Wade being on the older side.
Wade coulda unretired at any time.. he was done
If you’re trying to say that physically he was done, I don’t believe that at all. He played some decent amount of minutes over a 72 game stretch, at 37.
Physically, that is hard to do at that age so I tend to think he could have kept going. Maybe not as former FMVP/ALL-NBA superstar Dwayne Wade but as a great 3rd to 5th option with less offensive usage? Yeah, possibly, but was it worth going through the toll that he put on his body knowing that the Heat were a first round exit at best?
Going out that early in the playoffs or not even making them at all has to wear on these older players mentally who really aren’t still in the league for money. If that’s what you’re trying to say then, yeah, I’d totally agree.
Not physically.. physically he could be 6th man of the year right now lol…. mentally he was done… he didn’t wanna do the grind anymore. He said himself “I could play this role for another 5-6 years if I wanted….. I just want to be with my family”
2016…
Does everyone not remember the Heat were up 18, before the entire team got hurt in that 2020 finals?
Anyway, Bosh is the literal perfect type of player next to Bam if you’re trying to make Bam a 4 for some reason, and overall, he was the perfect big for the modern nba, and would have had a lot of big years left, in my opinion
I remember dragics foot and bam’s shoulder… Bosh would have shut down AD and the heat would have won that series in 5-6 … at his age by then he would only be a post defender.. and probably damn good at it.
IIRC the goon Dwight Howard caused one of those injuries.
Bam got hurt in the bubble ECF but im sure howard targeted it
Testing
8 years since he last played is so crazy
Damn, I would have loved to be at that game.
you can watch it on nba.com
Great career Dragon.
Meh. Overrated.
So are your mama jokes. Grow up loser.
Bosh signed in the summer of 2010 along with lebron
11x all star in 13 seasons, Bosh is very underrated
Very unselfish too. How many legit All-Star/All-NBA caliber players would be willing to put their egos aside coming into a new situation like he did for the betterment of the team’s success? Ray Allen, Iggy, Jrue & Kevin Love are just some that come to mind.
Chris Bosh played 1 of the greatest games I ever saw anyone play in the NBA finals, and had 0 points in that game…I’ve seen Draymond have amazing games where he’s everywhere like that too, but Bosh did it in a massive NBA finals elimination game
People really don’t get how good Chris Bosh really was, and what he could have been had he not been blackballed and was able to keep playing.
I honestly have no clue to what you are referring to in your last line with the blackballed part but I do agree that sometimes it hard to truly appreciate how good some players are/were having not watched them on a frequent basis. It’s a shame to have had his career end like that.
He could have medically kept playing, but nobody would let him
He was elected into the Hall of Fame. Players with this recognition are neither over nor underrated.
for those dumb enough to think Bosh was overrated.. explain that to every NBA team the last 15 years copying what he did in 2010-14….. he literally changed the NBA… he’s the reason a 7 foot wall of a man named embiid shoots 3’s today lol