It’s one of the great mottos in all of comic books, the iconic catchphrase that defines the superhero, Spider-Man.
“With great power, comes great responsibility.”
It’s so basic and true, that you are loathe to give credit to the brightly-colored funny papers for providing this righteous credo that applies to all of humanity, not just to crimefighters in spandex.
With Chris Bosh’s decision to re-sign with Miami and become the focal point of the team, his responsibilities have increased commensurately. Reserved by nature, he’s more likely to be sitting in a corner reading a book or being quietly contemplative; nothing else was required of him over the past four years with the Heat. But as the team’s highest-paid player and, in all honesty, as the most skilled, he now finds himself in a role he hasn’t really held before, that of the vocal leader, and it’s one he’s not quite comfortable with.
As he told the Sun-Sentinel’s Ira Winderman:
"“It’s something I always work on. My wife pushes me every day.”"
It’s a refreshing view to our athletes, and a sharp contrast to the former vocal leader of the team. LeBron James held that position since 2010 but he was often perceived as a cyborg-type, created in a government lab tasked with developing the perfect basketball machine. It’s not surprising that James’ marketing over the past few seasons (perhaps an offshoot of the negativity following “the Decision”) was premised on showing him at home with the family everyone forgot he had.
Bosh, with no cameras, surrounding hype or contrived storylines aided by playful music, reveals his humanity much more willingly.
The contrast between this new era and the one before it will be an underlying theme for most of the season and there’s nothing wrong with that. In putting together the “Big 3,” you had one of the most polarizing moments in recent sports history, a media storm born alongside the development of the 24-hour news cycle. So you can forgive fans, media and even the players themselves for not being able to let go, not completely anyway.
While the wound of James’ departure is still open and raw, embracing the differences that Bosh embodies are a healing salve.
As he added to Winderman:
"“I didn’t have to before, and when I did, it was mostly after it had gone too far and I needed to say something,” Bosh says of previously focusing on putting out fires instead of creating it. “But now I’m in a position where I need to say more, and I knew that coming in. We always talking about being uncomfortable and getting out of your comfort zone and stuff, and that’s something that doesn’t come naturally to me. But I’ve watched it for a while. I just try to fill whatever is needed.”"
There’s so much revelation in that off-the-cuff statement you find it hard to even start. First (whether consciously or not), he reveals the rough patches over the past years while explaining that his role was to smooth things over for the good of the team. He follows that up with an unbelievable level of introspection – not from athletes but from most of humanity – in recognizing how what is valued (“getting out of your comfort zone”) isn’t necessarily an easy process. He wraps it all up neatly by explaining that through a process of cautious observation he can determine what is required of him and does what he can to provide that.
We expect our athletes to be perfectly-constructed and infallible. When they are not (which is often), correcting any problems in their performance can simply be removed by “hard work,” usually involving repetition of the same mindless task until it’s improved. But Bosh doesn’t work that way, instead internalizing what’s necessary and then developing accordingly.
Need a 3-point shot? I’m your man. You’ve got two alpha males on the team? No problem, I’m one, too, but I’ll just take a back seat for a while. You want me to take over the team? Sure, it won’t be easy but I’ll give it a shot.
After his outstanding 26-point performance against the Wizards on Wednesday night, it’s easy to call the whole experiment a resounding success.
But leave it to Bosh to put things back into perspective, as he told Fox Sports’ Surya Fernandez after the game:
"It’s good. I need a couple of ‘I told you so’ moments throughout the course of the season, I’m not going to lie. But with that said, it’s one game. I have to make sure I’m staying focused on what we need to do and what I need to do individually and really just try to bring that effort every night."
He’s right, of course. Just ‘one game’ in a long season of self-discovery and determining the true identity of this team. But with Bosh at its core, it’s one that relies less on Terminator-like athleticism and more on admitting there’s a problem, analyzing what’s not working and figuring out how to fix it.
It’s a perfectly-human approach, and one that includes the full scope of what being human is all about. Weakness. Understanding. And, most of all, accepting the responsibility to make things better.