Chris Bosh - Harder Than Them

Over the past year, Chris Bosh has dealt with life-let alone career-threatening-injuries. His road back has been no joke, but the 10-time All-Star, ever the optimist, is back to doing what he does best.

- Yaron Weitzman

CHRIS BOSH’S LIFE has, for the most part, been a fruitful one, full of accolades, prosperity and success. He’s won championships and played in All-Star Games. He’s made $144 million on the court, and, via endorsements, a small fortune off of it.

And then there are the other gifts the game has given him, like the time and means to pursue his other interests. Bosh has made TV cameos and learned to play guitar; he’s chilled with camels and brewed his own beer. “All these things,” he says, “I couldn’t have done if I worked a 9-5.”

But like all human beings, despite his fame and fortune and freakish 6-11 height, Bosh has also dealt with the merciless side of life, and over the years he’s developed a coping mechanism for such times. “Don’t worry,” Bosh is fond of saying, both to himself and to his friends, those times when life hits hard, “the sun will come out tomorrow. Everything will be OK.”

A “glass half-full guy” is how Dean Keener, the former Georgia Tech assistant who recruited Bosh out of Dallas’ Lincoln HS, describes him. Bosh, he says, is the definition of a positive person, which is why he was so struck by the text messages he was getting from his former player and longtime friend back in late February. They were downtrodden, defeated and full of despair.The few times the two did speak over the phone Bosh sounded nervous—and understandably so.