Chris Bosh Fails Latest Physical. Is His NBA Career Over?

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The Miami Heat has not cleared Chris Bosh to play in the upcoming season, and his plan to resume play is in jeopardy, according to a report by the Associated Press.

“The Miami Heat regret that it remains unable to clear Chris to return to basketball activities, and there is no timetable for his return,” the team said in a statement released Friday, based on his preseason physical.

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And yet, late Friday night, Bosh released his own statement, saying, “Little setbacks happen.”

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“It’s not a matter of if I'll play again, it's when,” Bosh said on LeBron James’ digital platform, Uninterrupted.

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The team said that it cannot comment further on Bosh’s status because of a rule in the NBA’s collective bargaining agreement that precludes a team from releasing certain medical information without a player’s consent.

Yet, two days ago on the same site, in an installment of an original documentary series about Bosh called Rebuilt, Bosh himself revealed that a small clot was found in his leg this past February when he was in Toronto for the All-Star weekend, and a CT scan later found the existence of at least one other clot.

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Bosh was diagnosed with a pulmonary embolism in February 2015—a very serious condition in which a blood clot travels to the lungs—and was hospitalized for several days.

He recovered and was averaging 19.1 points last season when the second bout with clots began this past February.

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In a podcast with Uninterrupted last week and video on the site earlier this week, Bosh declared that he did not necessarily agree with team doctors and felt written off by them.

They told me that my season is over, my career is probably over and this just happens, this is just how it is. I felt right away that I was written off. It was put it to the side matter-of-factly. If a doctor tells me, ‘Hey, that’s it and this is how that is,’ and I don't buy that, I have the right to disagree with you.

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Where this leaves Bosh is up in the air at this point.

“I wouldn't be a friend if I didn’t express to him my concerns,” former Heat guard Dwyane Wade, now a member of the Chicago Bulls, told AP. “To me, the biggest thing is Chris has five kids and a wife and a family that depends on him being there. To me, that’s always most important. I told him, ‘Make sure you focus on that first.’”

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Bosh is the Heat’s highest-paid player, who, because of a guaranteed contract, will make $76 million in the next three years whether he is on court or not.