Chris Bosh Criticizes Pat Riley, Vows To Return To The NBA

Five days after Pat Riley announced that Chris Bosh’s career with the Miami Heat was over, Bosh has responded—vowing to return to the NBA and saying that Riley did not tell him about the team’s decision before sharing it with the media.

Bosh failed his preseason physical two weeks ago and has missed significant parts of the last two seasons due to blood clots. On the team’s media day this past Monday, Pat Riley announced that the Heat were done with Bosh. He noted that he had reached out to Bosh but had not received a reply.

In the latest installment of “Rebuilt,” the digital video series he’s directing about his struggle with blood clots and attempts to continue with basketball, Bosh said that the Heat’s stance doesn’t mean his NBA career is over. “There’s 29 other teams, it’s a whole league,” he said. “One team does not make up the opinion of everything.”

Bosh also said that he found that he failed his physical through the media, he was “in disbelief for a couple of seconds,” before he “threw [his] phone down and stormed out of the room.”

The rest of the video features Bosh sitting on the edge of a dock and writing in a notebook as he provides a voiceover of his version of events:

“I didn’t get a call or a text or anything like that. I mean, it’s a business. We understand that. We always say those things. But if you say certain things to the person and you win championships and you have these moments, you don’t want to find things out through the media.”

A Heat spokesman told the Sun-Sentinel that this was not true, saying that Riley had tried to reach Bosh multiple times both directly and through his agent.

Bosh has three years and $76 million remaining on his contract with the Heat.