Chris Bosh is warning Kevin Love not to necessarily expect a full slate of new and enhanced opportunities simply because he’s running with LeBron James these days.
Certainly, Bosh speaks from experience given his four seasons in Miami, all of which the All-Star veteran forward seems to remember as much for the way his scoring and rebounding numbers tumbled in every season as he does the two titles and four consecutive NBA Finals appearances the pair scored together alongside Dwyane Wade.
Clearly in Chris Bosh’s world, all that shines is not golden, and, presumably as one big man to another, he feels some sort of responsibility for making Love aware of his experiences with The King and what it could mean to be an underling in his regime.
“Yeah, it’s a lot more difficult taking a step back, because you’re used to doing something a certain way and getting looks a certain way,” said Bosh, who at 25 averaged 24 points and 11 rebounds in his final season with the Raptors, compared to the 25 and 13 the same-aged Love averaged prior to joining the Cavs. “And then it’s like, well, no, for the benefit of the team, you have to get it here… it’s extremely difficult and extremely frustrating.”
The now 30-year-old Bosh later added “everybody says they want to win, but when you start talking about sacrifices and doing what’s right for the team, it’s like ‘wait a minute, I didn’t mean that.’
Bosh, James Wade and Love are all set to be in Rio this weekend as the four-time league MVP’s new and old teams square off in the preseason and for the first time since he bolted South Beach for Cleveland earlier this summer.
“It’s never what you think it is,” Bosh added of ‘playing with a star the magnitude of James. “You just get your entree and that’s it. It’s like, I need my appetizer and my dessert and my drink, what are you doing? And my bread basket. What is going on? I’m hungry. Even if I was in his corner and I was able to tell him what to expect and what to do, it still doesn’t make any difference. You still have to go through things, you still have to figure out things on your own.”
All-Star veteran that he is, Kevin Love senses the distinctions from going from an also-ran like the Timberwolves to a title-contending leader like the Cavs, or at least he thinks he does.
“I’d be lying to myself and lying to everybody here if I was telling you I didn’t have to sacrifice,” he said. “I think it’s going to have to be an effort throughout the entire team to do what’s best for the Cleveland Cavaliers.”
James has heard all the grumblings now coming from his one-time locker room, and though he claims not to understand the source of many of them he seems to have made up his mind on how best to handle the situation.
“I know a lot of words have been coming out of their camp as of late and some of it is surprising,” he said. “We’ve got so much history together … it doesn’t take away from what we accomplished in Miami and I know that.”
