SAN ANTONIO - Maybe if he always played soft. Maybe if you never saw the other side of him. Maybe Chris Bosh wouldn’t be so roundly questioned if he wasn’t smart enough to know exactly what happens when he plays an aggressive game.
“We win,” Chris Bosh says, flatly.
It’s that simple, right?
“Like 99 percent of the time,” he says.
So the question I then asked him on the eve of today’s Game 5 of the NBA Finals was this: “And you aren’t aggressive every game, because …?”
And standing behind me with the same question is a line of Heat fans that runs from Palm Beach through Key West. What’s interesting is who’s in front of us.
“My family asks me that all the time - my cousins, my uncles, my aunts,” Bosh says. “My family’s rough. I get home and my wife says, ‘Why aren’t you …’ doing this or doing that?”
And?
He smiles. “It’s not that easy,” he said. “Or maybe it is that easy.”
There’s the essence of Bosh. If he was a landmark, he’d be Egypt’s “The Sphinx.” If he was a sculpture, he’d be Rodin’s “The Thinker.” If he was a book, he’d be … well, take your pick.
Heat Coach Erik Spoelstra has given a few books to players over the years. Last year, he gave out, Clutch: Excel Under Pressure.
“I’ve read it,” Bosh told him.
The year before, he gave, Mindset: How You Can Fulfill Your Potential.
“I’ve read it,” Bosh told him.
He even spouted thoughts from the book so Spoelstra knew it was true. Before games, while teammates listen to music to prepare, Bosh sits at his locker reading a book on his I-Pad.
The point is, this is not your normal star player. He thinks. He plots. He studies. And now before Game 103 of this season he claims to have an epiphany about his game.
“I got through this journey, every year trying to figure it out,” he says. “It takes me 100-some games. But I think - I hope - I’ve figured it out and hope will bring what I’m supposed to (tonight).”
What is the answer to his riddle?
“I can’t give away my secrets,”he said.
It’s not a tough guess. In the past three games, he has kept his shot inside 18 feet, taking just one three-point shot after leaning on it increasingly to that point. Some of that wasn’t his fault.
He was asked to move outside more this year, then stay outside on offense in the Indiana series to take Roy Hibbert out with him. But bringing balance to his game - some inside, some outside - was helped by the Heat’s lineup change before Game 4 that made him the only big man on the floor.
“I got passes around the basket, easy baskets, things that help get you going,” he said.
Or maybe, as he also says, that was the result of his aggressive disposition. You saw a lot of emotion churning around inside his 6-11 frame in Game 4, and you saw it seep out in the form of 20 points, 13 rebounds and 2 blocked shots.
“That’s the game I want to play every game,” he said. “I think I know what to do now.”
If so, it’s good news for the Heat, because LeBron James needs help from Bosh or Dwyane Wade. If both help, as they did in Game 4, all the easier. And maybe the stars align again like that for the Heat.
There’s no doubt Bosh struggles with his role on this team. He had to abandon the mid-post game he played in Toronto. He’s asked to cover players, like Hibbert, that his smaller frame struggles doing.
He says, again, “I think I’ve figured it out now.”
What’s the philosopher’s first step of wisdom? To know thyself? It’s taken Bosh a full season, for some reason. But the fact he says he knows himself now - even if it took this long - can only be a good thing for a Heat team that’s two wins from the championship or two losses from misery.
“They say repeating is more difficult than winning the first time,” he says. “I see what they mean after this. It isn’t easy. It wasn’t meant to be easy.”
But after 103 games, the Heat’s Sphinx, its Thinker, its Reader, has unlocked a secret that probably isn’t much of one. It’s what everyone from you, from me, from his aunts and uncles have asked on too many nights: Why so passive?
“Hopefully, no one will be asking that after the next game,” he says.
Sports, Pages 24 on 06/16/2013