Chris Bosh, wife welcome baby boy; Bosh will play Game 3 vs. Knicks tonight (UPDATED)
Chris Bosh and his wife Adrienne welcomed their first child, a boy named Jackson, into the world at around 3 a.m. Eastern on Thursday. (He's the tiny li'l guy the Miami Heat forward is cradling up there.) Mother and baby are reportedly healthy, with mother tweeting her appreciation for the public's kind thoughts and well wishes, and baby having a dope name that makes him sound like the kind of man who will crush us 'neath his heel one day, and so all is well with the Boshes of South Florida. (It is the couple's first son; Bosh has a daughter from a prior relationship.)
The next order of business for Chris Bosh? Hauling buns back to the Empire State, where he'd been after the Heat flew into New York Wednesday evening to prepare to take on the New York Knicks in Game 3 of their first-round Eastern Conference playoff series on Thursday night. It's an awful lot of traveling in a 24-hour stretch for the seven-time All-Star, as ESPN.com's Tom Haberstroh noted, but while the Heat are officially listing the forward as a game-time decision, Bosh's teammates are expecting him to be back in uniform, on the Heat bench and ready to go in time for the 7 p.m. tip at Madison Square Garden.
From Ira Winderman of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel:
"I would bet he would be here. This is a big game," forward LeBron James said. "I would hope he would be here."
Teammate Dwyane Wade said Jackson Bosh already has provided his first assist.
"He could thank Little Bosh for coming fast," Wade said. "We expect him to be here."
I'm sure Chris and Adrienne appreciate your understanding, fellas. And I'm sure Adrienne, especially, appreciates the thoughts toward the early hours of fatherhood reportedly offered to ESPN.com's Brian Windhorst by James, whose second son (the also-dopely-dubbed Bryce Maximus James) was born during the 2007 NBA Finals:
"This is a great way to get away from it, to come back here and play the game of basketball," James said. "To get away from the kid and get away from everything that's going on with that. I mean that's what I did, I got away from my family and I was able to go play in the Finals."
There are totally legitimate reasons for James to say that, by the way — the myriad family responsibilities, the way your schedule becomes completely wrecked, the lack of sleep, etc. But still, it sounds pretty funny in the immediate aftermath of the birth of a man's son to say, "Dude, you gotta get out of there!" Bron-Bron might catch some dirty looks when he walks over to Adrienne to meet little Jackson for the first time.
The Heat might not need Bosh to dispatch the Knicks, anyway — New York's down significantly from its season averages in every major category through two games of the series, James and Wade typically show out something fierce at the Garden, and the neat thing about having a Swiss army knife like James is that he can slide up to Bosh's usual four spot and allow the Heat to fill in the gaps with the likes of Mike Miller or Shane Battier at the three without batting an eyelash. Still, Bosh has played well in the first round's opening contests, hitting 10 of 19 field-goal attempts, getting to the line 12 times through two games and providing a steady, sound third option (that, frankly, Miami just hasn't needed all that much).
UPDATE:
It turns out that Chris Bosh strode into the Miami Heat locker room about 30 minutes before tip-off on Thursday night, to cheers from his Heat teammates. He will play against the Knicks in Game 3, paired up against big forward Steve Novak who will start in Amar'e Stoudemire's absence.
Photo of Bosh holding his son via Adrienne Bosh's Instagram feed, with a hat-tip to Surya Fernandez of Heat blog Hot Hot Hoops.
