Letters to a Young Athlete summary

Years before his professional career, Bosh played for his high school basketball team in southeastern Dallas, Texas. Bosh was always in the gym, running drills with his coach, Thomas Hill. 

One day, Coach Hill stopped Bosh in the middle of his drills and looked him in the eyes. He asked Bosh what he wanted to do with this.

Chris Bosh was only 19 years old when, in 2003, he got drafted by the Toronto Raptors. Bosh – smart, fast, and nearly seven feet tall – had always been a star. But now, in the NBA, Bosh was going against teams full of stars whose fame greatly eclipsed his own.

At first, he struggled to get the ball, and when he did get it, his shots kept failing. His opponents ran over him. Bosh fell into despair and let his defense fall apart.

When Chris Bosh landed in Miami in 2010, he came to play alongside Dwayne Wade and LeBron James, two of the best to ever grace the game. The press called them the “Big Three”. Then, in 2012, Ray Allen joined the team, an event that propelled the team into the annals of NBA history.

But in the locker room, or in the huddle, there was another player the team would often look to for guidance. His name was Juwan Howard.

In the first season of the Big Three, the Heat dominated the league. Bosh remembers how high he felt at the time. He was on one of the most talented teams ever assembled, and felt that the championship was as good as won.

Seneca, a Roman stoic philosopher, would have advised Bosh to cool down – and to avoid what he called “transports of delight.” As the famous intellectual said, “joy leads to exultation, and exultation leads to swaggering and excessive self-esteem.”

LeBron James stretches. 

James stretches when he gets up in the morning and before he goes to bed at night. He stretches before and after every workout, every practice, and every game. His stretching routine takes half an hour, and he’s known to do it almost at random. Even in the middle of a card game.

Plenty of people show up to watch Stephen Curry play with the Golden State Warriors. Those in the know arrive early and check out Curry’s pregame routine, a 20-minute series of drills cycling through a wild variety of positions.

Curry executes a similar, but longer, series of drills after each practice, taking over 300 shots before he quits. Curry is arguably the best shooter in NBA history, and has been for years. Even if he scored fewer shots, no one would think less of him. He’s a legend.