Erik Spoelstra defends Chris Bosh against criticism

The Miami Heat players made a conscious effort to get Chris Bosh involved early on in Game 4 of their Eastern Conference finals game with the Indiana Pacers on Monday night, and it paid off.

Bosh was 7-of-12, made 3-of-5 3-pointers and went 8-for-10 on free throws while scoring 25 points, which was second on the team. He scored the first eight points of the game for the Heat, which nearly matched his total of scoring exactly 9 points in each of the first three games of the series.

Though it looked from the outside like Bosh wasn’t doing much in the first three games, Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said after Game 4 that that wasn’t the case.

“I hate the storylines of the last few days because Chris has to do a lot of those things that people don’t understand for our game to work and he gets criticized for that,” Spoelstra said in defense of his forward. “But he impacts the game in so many winning ways that the average guy doesn’t necessarily see.”

Though Spo says Bosh impacted those other games in various ways, he still recognized that it was good for the team to get Bosh going early on because that helped instill confidence in the squad.

Spoelstra also singled out the game Rashard Lewis had. Though Lewis didn’t score any points and missed all five 3-pointers he attempted, he was still a +14 on the stat sheet. To Spoelstra, that was a sign that Lewis impacted the game in many other ways to help the team get a win.

Spoelstra may say that Bosh did a lot to help the team in the first three games, but there’s no doubt that Bosh did much more to help the team win in Game 4 than he did in the other games. If they get this from him again, they’ll close out the Pacers in Game 5 with ease.