Chris Bosh defends the tears, didn’t like Kobe’s shootaround
Chris Bosh has taken in his fair share of ridicule since becoming a member of the Miami Heat last summer, but you have to give it up to the man for interviews like this.
Obviously a chat with local radio personality Dan LeBatard isn't the most hostile situation Bosh can put himself in, but you do have to give it up to Bosh for not telling the world what it wanted to hear in the wake of coach Erik Spoelstra's admission that some unnamed Heat players were crying in the locker room after a loss to Chicago a week and a half ago.
"Any player who says they haven't cried over basketball, they're lying. … It's emotions. That don't make you weak. It doesn't make you weak as a man or as a player. That just shows how bad you want to win. It really doesn't matter at the end of the day."
I couldn't agree more. The Heat can't win, after they lose.
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Take the loss in stride, and they come off nonchalant and unprofessional. Take out a water cooler, punch a chalkboard? Petulant and immature. Well up with tears in frustration? The team gets needlessly called out for acting beneath their manhood, or some such tripe.
And secondly? Bosh almost "implicates" (as if that's a bad thing to admit) himself as one of the players who shed a tear. And if I'm a Heat fan, I want that. I want my players to be so angry and frustrated after a loss like that that the rage has no other way to manifest itself but in the most primal of emotions. And though you might think raging at the savior-less sky and kicking a fire hydrant might be the better way to go if you go all primal, it all comes from the same place. The Heat were sick of losing. Can you blame them?
After this, Bosh even took a shot at the brain trust at American Airlines Arena, for affording Kobe Bryant his camera-friendly public shootaround following Los Angeles' loss in Miami last week:
"I have no problem with guys wanting to get better, but if you think that any of us were going to be able to shoot on the Staples Center court for 90 minutes, you would be totally mistaken. I don't think they should have allowed him to do that. … We should've shut the lights off."
I agree. If any other player tries that, even LeBron, he gets told to stuff it, and pointed toward the practice court that was designed for such endeavors. And if any other player got away with that? They'd rightfully be called a phony, in preferring to let everyone know they were doin' work, instead of letting virtue be its own reward and heading toward a practice court that would have been unavailable to the media.
That said, Chris? Maybe play a little better in the clutch (like on Wednesday night, when you had two turnovers and zero field goals in 12 fourth-quarter minutes), and you won't have to stop responding to the soap opera nonsense your team can't help but create by way of its tacky public appearances, and underwhelming regular-season play.
