Bosh says NBA return for him is still possible

MIAMI — Sidelined Miami Heat forward Chris Bosh said on a televised webcast Sunday that he believes he could return to the NBA as a player, but also said he respects the Miami Heat's anticipated attempt to remove his salary from the team's salary cap.

Appearing on "Larry King Now" on the Ora.tv digital network, Bosh, when asked by the longtime broadcast personality whether he believes he ever will return to the NBA said, "Yeah, I think so."

Bosh has been away from the Heat since failing his preseason physical following blood clotting episodes that sidelined him for the second half of both the 2014-15 and '15-16 seasons.

"At heart," Bosh said, "I'm still an athlete. That is not how I want it to end."

But Bosh, taking a more conciliatory tone that he did in a series of videos he produced before to this past season, said he understood the Heat's desire for clarity with their salarycap position going forward.

Heat President Pat Riley said before the season that the Heat no longer were working toward Bosh's return, with the belief that Bosh's medical history made a return to the NBA too risky for the member of the franchise's 2012 and '13 championship teams.

"Yeah, I understand what they have to do as a team," Bosh, 33, said. "It is a business. I know we -- as athletes and owners and people involved with the NBA -- never want to say it's a business, and things like that. It's is a business. And hurt does come in with that. But as president of the Miami Heat, I understand what he has to do."

Bosh declined to get into specifics about the state of his health.

"It's complicated," he said. "It's very, very complicated, and that's why I haven't been able to play this year."

Bosh expressed mixed emotions about whether he misses playing.

"I do," he said, "but a part of me doesn't. Yeah. I've come to enjoy different aspects of life. There's a lot of life out there.

"I mean only because as basketball players, we do that, and that's really it. I've enjoyed spending time with my kids, enjoyed spending time with my wife, and just kind of relaxing and working on my mind and my soul."

As he has during other interviews, Bosh said the time away from the NBA has allowed him to take stock.

"It's been a very interesting time for me," he said, "only because I'm used to playing basketball. I'm used to practicing. I'm used to the schedule. That's kind of what I was born to do. That's what I've been doing my whole life. And over the last year, I have not been able to kind of fall back on that. So it's forced me to grow in a lot of different ways."

He said he has not attended games during his absence.

"To watch the game without me in it, is just no point doing that," he said, having served as a TNT studio analyst during the latter part of the regular season.

He reflected on when he was traveling with the Heat during last season's playoffs.

"If I can't play, there's no reason to go," he said. "One of the funniest things, not funny, but one of the most interesting parts of my experiences, you know, I'm a huge believer in mental preparation and all these things, and I kind of wanted to have certain things in my season last year. I wanted to help Dwyane [Wade] lead the team as far as possible, maybe to get back to the Finals with that team. Cleveland was very good. And I said, 'Hey, it would be real good if we just played my old buddy LeBron [James] up there. If we just had a classic battle of a series and we played. But before that we've got to get past Toronto and be able to go back where it all started and play a playoff series.'

"And it did not happen like that. But I had to watch it. That's kind of how it played out."

When asked what might be next, Bosh hedged.

"I don't know," he said. "And that's exciting. It's always this kind of pressure as an athlete, people [asking], 'What are you going to do? And you should do this? Or you should do that?' I think it's OK to say, 'I don't know what I want to do.' I have a lot of things on my mind."

Asked if he would be interested in moving into coaching on the NBA level, something former Heat teammate Juwan Howard has done on Erik Spoelstra's Heat current staff, Bosh said no.

"No, I don't want to coach. I don't want to coach," he said. "I will always be around the game of basketball. I think, if I do, it would be young minds. But grown men? No. I would not want to do that.

"I would have to be in a very different place in my life to coach basketball. I'll always work out and be in the gym. But coaching? Hmm."

LYNNE SLADKY/AP Chris Bosh, here with his wife Adrienne at a UM basketball game earlier this year, says he understands the Heat’s position concerning his status.