Chris Bosh Stopped Watching Other NBA Teams Play


Miami Heat star Chris Bosh, like everyone else with a pair of eyes, knows that opponents go a lot harder when facing the defending champs than when playing against other teams. That’s why Chris Bosh isn’t tuning into NBA League Pass anymore. Per Bleacher Report: “I had to stop watching basketball,’ the Miami Heat center said after Tuesday’s 107-97 home loss to the Detroit Pistons. ‘I can’t even watch basketball. ‘Oh, really, you’re playing like that? Golly!’ It’s crazy. Seriously, you watch games—it’s like it’s totally different teams. That’s why I don’t like watching NBA anymore. I just watch us. It’s like, you watch the big prime-time games; but you watch another game, you’ll get in your head what this team is, and they’ll be something totally different tomorrow.’ Bosh isn’t the only Heat player to take note of opponents elevating their games against Miami. Dwyane Wade has mentioned it often, and LeBron James did again Tuesday. They knew it was coming—it was a question posed to them at their first shared media-day press conference in the fall of 2010. But clearly it’s left them weary over time. ‘Yeah,’ Bosh said. ‘This is our fourth year. You see guys out there, you’re like, come on. This is another game for us, this is another step for us to get where we’re going, this is everybody’s Super Bowl. You know, that’s no excuse; it’s just what we have to be up against, especially being up against ourselves, it is difficult. But this is what we signed up for.’ Last season, James rattled off a list of players who had turned in career-high performances in some category against the Heat (such as John Henson’s rebounds) or done something against Miami that they never do against anyone else (like Paul Millsap’s string of late-game three-pointers). Heat fans have even coined a Twitter hashtag for the come-from-nowhere superstar: #RSHK (Short for #RandomScrubHeatKiller) This season, Miami has four losses, to four teams—the 76ers, Nets, Celtics and Pistons—that are a combined 24-47 against everyone else. Some of that is the Heat’s fault. They got off to terrible starts against Philadelphia, Brooklyn and Detroit, and were not engaged defensively for too long against Boston. But there’s no question that some strange things have happened.”