When Cleveland Cavaliers big man Kevin Love opened up about his struggles with anxiety, he effectively took the concept of mental health issues out of the taboo category. Now, it is the turn of two-time NBA champion Chris Bosh to share his own personal battle with a similar disorder.
As relayed by Bosh himself in an interview with Jackie MacMullan of ESPN, one of his worst bouts of anxiety kicked in after he had signed with the Miami Heat in 2010.
“I was coming from Toronto, a benign situation,” Bosh says. “I figured, ‘All right, people are going to understand why I went, and they are going to like me.' That's all I cared about — that people liked me.
“I go there, and I'm smiling, and everyone is scowling at me. The whole LeBron ‘Decision' had everybody so mad. I don't know why, but I caught so many stray bullets being around it. Then we lost [in the 2011 NBA Finals to Dallas], and people were dogging me. I started to get pretty bitter.”
On the heels of the Heat's NBA Finals defeat to the Dallas Mavericks, a postgame video of Bosh in tears went viral. The public ridiculed him for it, and the 34-year-old almost could not handle it.
“All those people who made fun of me for breaking down, they didn't understand,” Bosh says. “I put my life into this. I was getting it from all sides, and then we lose. I expressed my feelings, and then they made fun of me for that. I was too honest. I just couldn't win.”
At the moment, Bosh is still battling both physical (blood clots) and psychological issues as he hopes to return to the NBA in the near future. The entire basketball community is getting behind him here, and hopefully he is able to overcome these hurdles and come back as a renewed man.
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