Chris Bosh on return to Heat: 'The challenge of being a leader, it excites me'

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It seems as if Chris Bosh heard some of the reaction to his new deal with the Miami Heat, one that will reportedly pay him $118 million over five seasons.

But Bosh only averaged 16.2 points, how is he going to lead a team? The Toronto Raptors never did anything with Bosh as their franchise guy!

Ask Bosh, though, and the challenge of once again leading a team is one he's looking forward to a great deal.

"I can't lie to you. I'm excited. I'm excited for the challenge," Bosh told ESPN. He continued:

I want to step up to the challenge. I feel this is a chance to prove to myself and others that I can still do this. I want to see if I can do what's necessary to go in there and win every night. That's the challenge of being a leader. It excites me. It's been a long time and I feel like I'm a much better player and a leader now, so it'll be fun.

He also expressed confidence, saying "I think I know how to do it."

Looking at Bosh's stat line alone doesn't do his skill set justice, however. He may not be LeBron James, but Bosh is probably one of the league's top-20 players. While he averaged just 17.3 points in four seasons in Miami, he also did so shooting 50.9 percent, all the while developing a 3-point shot that's made him a more efficient scorer as time's gone on. That complements his lethal mid-range shooting pretty well (he was 17th in mid-range makes this season and had the third-best percentage on those shots of all players in the top-30).

Now, the trade-off between usage and efficiency is such that Bosh's percentages may come down, but he'll also see far more touches - he ranked just 51st in field goal attempts per game this season and 73rd in usage rate among qualified players. Expecting 20 points a night wouldn't be unrealistic, though he may not get back to the 22.8 points and 9.9 rebounds he averaged in his prime seasons with the Raptors.

Defensively, Bosh also remains one of the top pick-and-roll bigs in the game, and while that may not hold true late in the contract, the guess here is that he's in the ballpark of earning the contract over the next few seasons.

As for the option to bolt to the Houston Rockets, Bosh cited family and familiarity as reasons for staying in South Beach:

I'd be lying if I sat here and said Houston wasn't enticing. You look at their roster and you can kind of see why it makes sense for them to be interested in me, with the chance they have to be successful. They're going to be a good team regardless next year. It just seemed like I would be that final piece that they needed. It was a hard choice to turn down.
...
We've built a life in South Florida and we're comfortable. So I had to do what's best now for myself and my family.

The weather probably doesn't hurt, either.