No one seems to know when, or if, Chris Bosh will be returning to the Miami Heat this season.
Not even the Heat themselves.
Dwyane Wade riffed on Chris Bosh, who is once again sidelined with a blood clot issue, ahead of Miami’s overtime victory against the Indiana Pacers on Tuesday night, and he didn’t sound too optimistic that his teammate of six seasons would be returning anytime soon.
From the Miami Herald‘s Manny Navarro:
“I think the one thing is we’re not waiting to get the word on him,” Wade said. “We’re approaching this going forward with who we have in this locker room, whoever is ready to go. CB’s been around. I talked to him. The way his personality is, what he gives to the team, no one has to worry about him. We check up on him. That’s our brother. But we know he’s going to do everything possible to get back on the court with us.
“[But we] can’t wait on that. Just like the last two games, they couldn’t wait on me. They went out there and played. I think a lot of people forget that out of 450 odd players in the league, that’s what we are — NBA players. Guys can play basketball, especially giving them an opportunity to do something a little different, outside of what they [normally] have to do. [There’s] no waiting on CB. No one can replace CB, but guys have their own strengths. You’ve seen it the last two games.”
The Heat have won each of their first three games out of the All-Star break and, for the moment, own the Eastern Conference’s third-best record. Their success is patently surprising given how important Bosh is to the team. He had one of the squad’s best net ratings before being forced to take a seat.
It’s unclear if the Heat will be able to keep rattling off wins with such frequency should Bosh miss extensive time. But they’re playing faster and smarter of late, and there is more than enough talent inside the starting lineup for them to get by.
In the meantime, we wait for a concrete update on Chris Bosh, one of the seemingly genuine good dudes in the NBA. The Heat, despite their current state of affairs, need him in the grand scheme of things, or at the very least need to know whether they should plan to be without him for the rest of this season.
