The former Miami Heat star says a pulmonary embolism caused the collapse he first revealed earlier this year and reinforced the need for lifelong treatment.
Chris Bosh says the health scare he first described earlier this year was caused by a pulmonary embolism that nearly killed him. The retired NBA star’s update adds medical context to his account of waking up injured after blacking out and revisits the blood-clot condition that first sent him to a South Florida hospital and eventually ended his NBA career.
TMZ reported that the Hall of Famer disclosed the diagnosis during an interview with HoopsHype. Bosh said he suffered another pulmonary embolism, spent a week in the hospital and came close to dying.
“I almost dropped dead pretty much and came back to life. I’m not joking,” Bosh said.
The former Miami Heat star previously said he was preparing for a date with his wife when a numbing sensation moved through his leg. He lost consciousness in his bathroom and later awoke injured after his wife called 911. When Bosh first shared the experience publicly in February, he did not identify what caused the collapse.
Bosh now says he experienced no warning symptoms before the January medical emergency. He said the episode taught him that he must keep taking his medication and caring for his body, even though he had believed the clotting problem was behind him.
Bosh’s health scare came more than a decade after his first documented clotting emergency. In February 2015, Bosh was hospitalized after a clot believed to have formed in one of his legs traveled to a lung. He returned the following season, but another clotting issue emerged in 2016 and kept him from playing again.
In 2017, Bosh’s condition was declared career-ending for NBA salary-cap purposes as the Heat prepared to remove him from their roster. He formally retired in 2019 after an 11-time All-Star career that included two NBA championships with Miami. The Heat retired his No. 1 jersey, and he entered the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2021.
Bosh said the condition will require lifelong attention. His January medical emergency reinforced the warning he shared with fans after the collapse: serious health problems can arrive without notice, and prescribed treatment cannot be treated casually.
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