Bo Kimble, fearful of Chris Bosh's health, wants Bosh to hang it up

Bo Kimble has firsthand knowledge regarding how horrifying it can be to watch a teammate and friend risk his life to compete in a relatively pointless basketball game.

Kimble’s Loyola Marymount teammate Hank Gathers fell to the floor after suffering a massive heart attack during a game against the Portland Pilots in 1990, passing away at the age of 23. The star forward was diagnosed with an irregular heartbeat just four months before, after collapsing to the court in another game, but had lowered his dosage of heart medication after complaining that it was adversely affecting his game. Gathers was the NCAA’s leading points per game scorer at the time of his death.

Chris Bosh has seen his season end after complications from blood clots for two campaigns running now, and reports suggest that the Heat All-Star may never play an NBA game again. Kimble, who went on to a brief NBA career with the Los Angeles Clippers and New York Knicks, thinks the Miami star should consider hanging it up. From TMZ:

"There are so many other things he could do with his life. Hank Gathers had the same thing, Hank could have been a comedian, and actor or did speaking engagements. It’s not worth the risk. I would just say absolutely not, don’t do it."

[…]

"If Hank had the ability to do it again he wouldn't have paid the ultimate price ... I am sure [Bosh] has children and they are going to need their father around as much as possible."

We also spoke to Hank's brother Derrick who echoed Kimble's sentiments.

"To this day I am just getting over the loss of my brother ... just fall back and retire."

Bosh, who turned 32 in March, turned in another stellar season with the Heat this year. He averaged 19.1 points in just 33 minutes a game with 7.4 rebounds and 2.4 assists. It would be an easy and correct assumption to conclude that had Chris been healthy during Miami’s playoff run, the team would have been able to move past the Toronto Raptors in the second round of the playoffs, taking on former Heat star LeBron James in the Eastern finals as a reward.

Instead, for the second season in a row, Bosh’s blood clots knocked him out of game action during the NBA’s All-Star break. Reports suggested that Bosh was eager to attempt a comeback while working on blood thinners, but the Heat franchise rightfully put the kibosh on those thoughts. Miami – which would receive no salary cap benefits from keeping Chris Bosh on the shelf until at least next February – has no interest in endangering the life of the 11-time All-Star.

The Portland Pilots point guard at the time of Hank Gathers’ death was Erik Spoelstra, who has acted as Heat coach since 2009 and for the duration of Chris Bosh’s time with the team. Spoelstra was on the court and just a few feet removed from Gathers when the 23-year passed away.

Kimble’s remarks come on the same weekend of an NBA-sponsored health screening test in Orlando. The NBA’s in memoriam list for 2015 was cruelly long, with former centers Moses Malone and Darryl Dawkins passing away unexpectedly at a too-early age due to heart disease. In response, the league established test centers and pro bono checkups for retired players in collaboration with the league’s player’s union.

From the Orlando Sentinel:

Nick Anderson, the first player the Orlando Magic ever drafted and a member of the Orlando Magic Hall of Fame, took part in Saturday's session.

The tests took about an hour to complete.

"It's a blessing," Anderson said. "When I got the e-mail, got the call that this was going to be taking place, I jumped right on it."

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, heart disease was the leading cause of death in the United States in 2014.

Chris Bosh is still an All-NBA-level talent, and he does not suffer from the same heart-related conditions that Gathers and the late Reggie Lewis were diagnosed with. Still, there is no precedence for an NBA player of any caliber working through blood clots and the resultant prescribed blood thinners he takes in order to combat his condition.

Even for someone with a rewarding off-court life and hundreds of millions in career earnings, it absolutely cannot be easy for someone with Bosh’s skills and relative youth to even consider walking away, much less following through on the retirement process. And in a league that doesn’t want to say goodbye to veterans that were drafted in the last century (to say nothing of the relatively youthful Chris Bosh), on the heels of sub-standard playoff performances, nobody wants to see Bosh have to walk away. Nobody in this league wants to conclude that they’ve seen Chris play his final NBA game.

This, sadly, still might be the case. As Bo Kimble suggested, the league, its fans, the Heat and Chris Bosh are inching closer and closer to the point where it becomes obvious that the risk of Bosh playing NBA basketball might just be too great.