Chris Bosh on Crowd at Pacers Home Games: 'White as a Trump Rally'

Former Miami Heat All-Star Chris Bosh is providing stories from behind the scenes of his championship runs alongside LeBron James and Dwyane Wade on The Last Chip and recently wrote about the racial undertones his team faced when they traveled to play the Indiana Pacers.

He compared the crowd at Bankers Life Fieldhouse to a Trump rally when discussing the 2013 Eastern Conference Finals:

"It'd be hard to overstate the influence Hoosiers still has on that town. And if you haven’t seen that movie in a while, you might not remember the racial undertones, but we did. Hoosiers is about a team of white guys who played the right way taking down the City Boys, who just so happened to be Black. And any time you travel to Indiana for an NBA game, you’re faced with the same narrative: This is basketball country. Sure, many of the players on the Pacers were Black, but have you ever seen the crowd in Bankers Life Fieldhouse? S--t’s as white as a Trump rally."

Bosh described the heated seven-game series in detail, acknowledging that he struggled throughout the first six contests before calling Juwan Howard to work on his shots heading into Game 7.

He still went just 3-of-13 from the field in the decisive contest, but the Heat won by a commanding 23 points to earn a trip to the NBA Finals against the San Antonio Spurs. Miami also won that Finals in seven games to clinch a second consecutive championship.

"As I felt my own confidence returning, the whole team was syncing up," Bosh wrote of Game 7. "It was like we were all sizing up the Pacers from across the blacktop: These guys? Pshhh."

He said neither team liked each other, which contributed to the intensity of the series.

The Heat also defeated Indiana in the 2012 playoffs and a 2014 Eastern Conference Finals rematch.