LeBron James became a world champion in Miami and started his incredible streak of nine consecutive trips to the Finals with four appearances alongside superstar teammates Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh, but stunned the organization in the summer of 2014 by leaving in free agency to rejoin the Cleveland Cavaliers.
In an appearance on the All The Smoke podcast, Bosh opened up about James’ departure from the Heat, which Bosh said took him months to get over personally. Bosh said that he thought James was “BSing” when he found out in a text message that the team’s MVP was leaving, but then saw every media outlet reporting the news minutes later.
LeBron told Chris Bosh via text that he was leaving Miami. pic.twitter.com/hssBPE526N
— Hoop Central (@TheHoopCentral) November 20, 2020
Matt Barnes: “Was it talked about amongst you three? How did you find out he decided to take his talents back to Cleveland?”
Chris Bosh: “Through a text. Through a text. I thought he was BS-ing, and then about 10 minutes later it’s everywhere.
I understand it. I get it. At the time I didn’t understand it. At the time, in my mind, I was ready to put the team back together – because we had just lost [to the Spurs] – so we wanted to put something back together so we could win. And it really didn’t go like that. I took offense to it, to be honest, at first. I was only thinking of how I felt about it, and me and Bron talked about it, but you know, I’m a competitor.
And to be honest with you, when you go back to the locker room and Bron ain’t in that chair, and then everyone’s kind of looking at you for that 25 points and looking at [Dwyane Wade] for that 25 points, that’s like ‘damn, man… [expletive], my knee hurts!’
We really did realize how special of a player he was, but at that time, I’m super competitive, I was upset… and it took some time to get over it. I want to say… it took months to get over it. [LeBron and I] had to be in the same place and talk about it. Nothing deep, but just talk and get back to good terms and get back to where we were. I’m glad we did. It was tough to deal with.”
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