Category — Chris Bosh

The only thing better would be a fly on the wall in Kobe’s house and hear his true opinion on Miami’s 3′s Company.
Michael Jordan was the latest to weigh in on the LeBron James-Dwyane Wade-Chris Bosh connection in Miami. It probably wasn’t what James wanted to hear, but what else could he expect His Airness to say? Last time we checked, he too is an NBA owner.
You Been Blinded

So we have a super team in Miami, another in L.A. and the original Big 3 in Boston. Great, how about the rest of the basketball world, what happens to those fans?
The question gets overlooked when it comes to the NBA. The logic is that great teams matter most and make for a great league.
Interesting. When it comes to baseball, that doesn’t seem to matter.
It was believed that the salary cap in the NBA would actually even the playing field, giving more teams a chance to win a championship. It is also believed that no cap makes baseball a no-win situation for the average franchise.
Again, interesting.
A quick look at the last 30 years officially tells a different story.
Since 1980, the NBA has crowned 31 champions; yet only 8 franchises have won those, with only 2 of those being 1-time winners, Miami and Philadelphia. Houston’s 2 titles came when Michael Jordan was taking a break, so you wonder what might have happened if Jordan didn’t experiment with baseball.
Compare the NBA title runs to the baseball, where all we hear about it how hard it is for teams to compete with the big boys. In the past 9 years, baseball has crowned 8 different champs. And places like Tampa Bay, Denver and Houston have hosted World Series games.
Sure, the Yankees have won more than a few, but look at the same past 30 years. Since 1980, 18 different cities have hosted World Series championship parades, more than double that of the NBA. Pro football has had 16 Super Bowl winners.
Yet the NBA doesn’t seem to be worried about such numbers, instead hoping that superstar teams and star power will continue to rise above the fact that only 4 of 5 clubs have a chance to win a championship each season.
Look at the upcoming season. Other than the Heat and Lakers, the early picks in Vegas and by hoop experts, what other teams have a chance to run the table? Maybe the aging Celtics can put together 1 more run, or the young Bulls might put up a fight, but there are not many others.
In other words, same old franchises, same old story in the NBA.

Come on Spike. Did you really believe LeBron, D-Wade and Chris Bosh were actually going sign with the Bricks? The Clip Joint had a better chance.
Like plenty of others, the award-winning filmmaker believes the trio already had decided where they were headed before this past week’s announcements.
N.Y. Times

Phil Jackson frequently gets tweaked about inheriting great teams. As great a coach and as forward a thinker as Red Auerbach was, he too inherited some great clubs. You’re only as great as your talent in the NBA. It isn’t like either coach, or any coach for that matter, took the best of the rec leagues and turned them in to multiple NBA champions. It doesn’t work that way.
That brings us to Pat Riley. He too is a great coach and a good talent evaluator. But Riley, unlike Phil, seems to get the benefit of the doubt, particularly recently in light of the gold mine he landed with LeBron, D-Wade and Chris Bosh. Some are hailing St. Pat as the greatest thing since sliced bread. But do you really believe Riley could have pulled off this deal if not for Wade?
Riley has been on the end of some great fortune. And for those who specialize in revisionist history, let’s revisit a few facts.
Riley inherited the Showtime Lakers from Paul Westhead (aka Eddie Munster), who Magic Johnson had fired despite the Lakers and Westhead winning the ’80 title. Westhead actually inherited (there’s that word again) the Lakers in 1979 from Jack McKinney, who suffered a near fatal bicycle accident.
Riley, who was getting schooled in the broadcast booth by the legendary Chick Hearn, took over for Westhead during the 81-82 season. With 3 Hall of Famers (Magic, Kareem and James Worthy) and some awesome role players, Riley and the Lakers won 4 titles.
But he also cost them too, the ’88 sweep by the Pistons being one of his biggest goofs. After a grueling regular season and a run to the NBA Finals, Riley decided it was a good idea to take the Lakers to Santa Barbara for “boot camp” before facing Detroit. The result? Byron Scott and Magic both pulled hamstrings early on in the series and it was over.
The Lakers would also wind up giving Riley another jewel years later. When the Lakers and Jackson parted ways after the 2004 NBA Finals, where they lost to the Pistons, the Lakers offered Riley the coaching job. Why is beyond me. Fortunately, he turned it down, but before he left town, Riley made a deal with the Lakers to take Shaq back to Miami with him.
Of course that deal resulted in Riley’s 5th ring as a coach.
Granted, despite his dictatorial ways, Riley has earned a place among the NBA’s top coaches. He also has proven himself to be a good executive, but he’s frequently had help.
But just like Jackson, Auerbach and some of the best, he too was handed some of the best situations and players. As an NBA executive, he’s been as lucky as Mitch Kupchak, who got a gift named Pau Gasol and the Laker troubles turned into golden balls. Plus, players are attracted to the NBA’s best franchises, whether its the Celtics, Lakers or any of the new kids on the block, and some of the best cities, Miami obviously being one of the best. It’s another reason LeBron and his crew were attracted to the Heat.
So when you start annoiting Riley as one of the greatest of all time, take a Valium and consider the circumstances. Like any NBA coach and executive, a little luck goes a long way.

Derek Fisher is meeting with Pat Riley on Saturday as the Heat attempts to persuade the Laker point guard to join the circus in Miami. This surely isn’t going over well with Kobe Bryant, who said yesterday that the Lakers need to bring Fisher back whatever the costs. The Lakers’ stance is curious to say the least, knowing Fisher is the clubhouse leader and one of the more cerebral individuals in the NBA.
ESPN LA

Oh hell nah. Heat fans might disagree, but a little food for thought when they sober up tomorrow. A little Left Coast perspective, if you will.
As I mentioned to my man Jimmy G, old hoop heads like me are all giddy about the endless possibilities of another promising NBA season that remains more than 4 months away. Still, unlike what Michael Wilbon inaccurately stated, the balance of power still resides in the West.
The Heat, C’s and Magic are the cream of the crop in the East, but the West still has the 2-time defending champs, the rising Thunder and their quiet assassin Kevin Durant, the Nugs, Mavs, Jazz, Spurs and the Blazers, health being the major factor for them and their noted flasher Gred Oden withstanding.
Some folks will laugh, but the Clip Joint has some nice pieces, enough of them they could become a playoff team.
But let’s get back to everyone’s favorite flavor and surely the preseason favorite to win it all, the Heat and all their new-found bandwagon riding fans.
My 1st question: Who’s your center? Freaking Jamaal Magloire? Or a fat-meat-is-greasy rook like Dexter Pittman? While Heat fans were wetting their pants tonight, their former center Jermaine O’Neal was wetting his and signing a deal with the C’s. If you don’t believe that’s significant, you need to get out more.
My point is this: Unless Miami finds someone to plug its glaring hole in the middle (please, Chris Bosh is a forward and Andrew Bynum would eat his lunch, as Coach Quinn was fond of saying), it might not come out of the East despite the All-Star threesome the Heat now employs. Though they have plenty of time to address their weakness, they will need to address it, which is required balling, particularly in the East.
Last time we checked, Boston still have some major beef inside and Dwight Howard is still the best center in the NBA. The Heat will have to deal with that.
As far as the Lakers go and if Miami ventures this far, LeBron already slipped. He provided some incentive in an innocent way, saying “If Kendrick Perkins doesn’t go down” the NBA Finals could have had a different result. Who?
Don’t think Kobe didn’t catch that. His eyes and brains almost popped out of his head.
And like us, he’s probably drooling already. Too bad we have to wait.

The King has left his kingdom. His castle moves to South Beach. His court is now empty.
In reality, the King is dead.
LeBron James, the basketball icon that made up his own nickname “King James” when he was just learning how to drive, has taken a giant step in his career. Backward.
He has decided to leave the comforts of home to become just another basketball warrior. From icon to mercenary with the swipe of a pen and a huge paycheck.
As he revealed his final decision on national television, James showed he was more mouse than man. He never told the 5 clubs he was turning them down, letting his show on TV do that for him.
In other words, he wasn’t man enough to stand up for his decision.
Not even his hometown of Cleveland got that much respect from him. So we now know this was all about James.
And did we need an hour-long show to hear 5 or 6 words?
Maybe this shows why his teams have bowed out of the playoffs. Just like in the most recent post-season, James looked meek, tired and quite honestly, almost uninterested during his made-for-TV special.
Ironically, James is going to a city where one of the greatest players in sports played without winning a championship and is loved for it. He can learn from Dan Marino.
One thing we’ve learned for sure is you can never again compare James to Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant or even Larry Bird and Magic Johnson. At best, he is Moses Malone, a great player who had to travel to Philly to win a ring.
And James may have become the most hated man in the NBA after the way he handled this past week.
That is not the legacy he is banking on and you wonder if he didn’t hurt his commercial appeal to Madison Avenue, which seems more important to him than his basketball skills.
James tossed his top gun status to the side to go play 2nd fiddle with Dwyane Wade on South Beach.
Back when Bird and Magic were battling each other for titles, Miami wasn’t even in the Association. Now, that city is center stage after having the best summer of any NBA franchise. Keeping Wade and getting James along with Chris Bosh makes the Heat an extremely hot property.
But is this is 3 friends creating their own frat so they can throw parties for all their buddies? Kegger party at D-Wade’s.
Championships? Those are harder to suck up than these guys think.
I remember an unbeatable team from Los Angeles experts said could never lose. It lost in 5 games to the Detroit Pistons in the Finals and had to be blown up afterward.
It makes sense for James to go to Miami and join a power team. But he loses an awful lot in the process. He sold his soul for a title and there is no guarantee he’ll win one.
But don’t call the Heat his team. Miami is Wade’s town. This is his show.
Even if they play together for the next 10 years and win 7 titles together, Wade will have won 8.
He can never win more than Wade if they play together. Ever.
This is why it makes no sense if James really wants to be King of the basketball world. You can’t be King if you don’t have the most jewels in your crown. And you surely can’t be King without any rings.
Think Bird would have left the Celtics to go play with the Lakers just for a ring? Or Magic to the C’s? Just the thought is nauseous.
Jordan never left Chicago to win a title elsewhere. Before he won, he struggled through bad teams and tough times, but nobody won more with less than Jordan. Nobody.
James is not Jordan.
More importantly, we all lose.
James and Wade, 2 of the 3 best talents in the game, will both have to change their styles some to play together.
It was believed when this summer started that James was in a no-lose situation. Now it seems like even if he does capture a few titles in Miami, he can’t win.
And if he fails, he’ll always be remembered as the King with no rings.

That’s what tonight’s summit is being billed when the King with no rings tells the masses of his much-awaited intentions.
Sources, sources, sources…
Speaking of sources, plenty of media folks were taking Stephen A. Smith to task weeks ago when he reported that LeBron James was heading to Miami. Regardless of one’s opinion of the bombastic Smith (and folks don’t have a high one of him), he might have nailed one of the biggest free agent stories since Shaq bolted Orlando for L.A., altering the landscape of the NBA and resulting in 3 consecutive titles for the Lakers before it all crashed and burned.
No one knows where James will wind up until he makes his announcement tonight with millions glued to the set and ESPN. ESPN’s Chris Broussard is saying James is tipping his hand toward Miami. Well yeah, its Miami nice or Cleveland.
If he does shake up the basketball world and head to South Beach to join his playmates Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh, it will tip off one of the most anticipated NBA seasons in years. And it’s only July.
ESPN The Magazine

Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh announced today that they will play together for the Heat next season, sending Miami fans into a state of ecstasy. It means Miami has landed 2 of the 3 top free agents on the market, with LeBron James scheduled to make his anticipated choice tomorrow. And you can’t help wondering if these 3 will hook up in South Beach in a bid to unseat the Lakers and to create their own legacy.
Miami Herald

In L.A. on Tuesday, we got minute-to-minute updates on the tube on whether Lindsay Lohan was heading to jail. Obviously, you heard she got 90 days, but the jury is out on how many she will actually spend.
On Thursday, we get more reality TV. LeBron James will announce what club he is signing with during an hour special on ESPN.
ESPN.com