Former Heat player Chris Bosh shares story of how Kobe Bryant motivated the Big Three in Miami

How a Kobe Bryant moment during the 2008 Olympics helped the Miami Heat win two championships

Chris Bosh went all the way back to the 2008 Olympics to find the inspiration for what made the Miami Heat so dominant during the Big Three era.

From 2010-14, the Heat won two championships in four consecutive NBA Finals appearances. For Bosh, it started when he witnessed the late Kobe Bryant working out during the Olympics.

"That morning, I headed down to breakfast early, which made me feel good about myself because I figured most of my teammates were still sleeping," Bosh wrote in his newsletter "The Last Chip." "And I was right. Basically no one else was down there... except for Kobe. Not only was he the first to breakfast, but he also had ice bags on his knees, which meant he’d already worked out. Mind you, this was less than two weeks after the Lakers lost in the Finals to the Celtics. You couldn’t have blamed him for resting up and focusing on being healthy for the next season. But instead, the dude was pushing himself harder than any human being I had ever met—waking up at 4:00 a.m. to hit the gym. That meant all of us were gonna push ourselves, too."

It was that mindset Bosh, LeBron James and Dwyane Wade used when they teamed up in the summer of 2010. Bosh said Bryant, who died in a helicopter crash in January, set the tone.

"With Kobe as an inspiration, D and Bron elevated their games that summer, balling out at practices at a level I’d never seen before," Bosh said. "And they, in turn, inspired me. Hell, we all inspired each other. Because we knew that if we didn’t step up, there was no way we’d get playing time. So I started hitting the gym earlier than I ever did before. That’s the same intensity we brought to Miami, and it’s one of the things about my time there that I cherish most: Every day, I was inspired by Bron and D-Wade to push myself harder and reach higher. Not a practice went by during our four years playing together where they didn’t encourage me to leave everything on the floor; and I’d like to think I did the same for them."

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