Letters to a Young Athlete

A legendary NBA player and beloved teammate shares his hard-earned wisdom about finding your true purpose and mastering your inner game, whatever that game might be.

Chris Bosh is on any list of the Top 100 NBA players of all time--an eleven-time All Star, two-time Finals winner, Olympic gold medalist, and currently the league's Global Ambassador. Always an uncommonly philosophical NBA star, with interests far beyond basketball, including fashion and music, he found himself needing all the mindfulness he could muster in 2017, when his career was cut short at its prime by a freak medical condition. Suddenly, he was thrown out of his cherished vocation, the work that had given so much more than just a livelihood, and had to think deeply about his passion, his purpose, his identity in the world. This game had taught him so much; what could he make of it all? How could he leave something behind that would help others along the way?

Out of that place of deep reflection has emerged a most uncommon book for a retired superstar to write. While it has the best elements of a memoir--the portraits of the great players and coaches, from LeBron and Kobe to Pat Riley and Coach K, and the accounts of extraordinary competitive moments--it is really a wisdom book, a blend of The Inner Game of Tennis, Wynton Marsalis's To a Young Jazz Musician, and Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet. It is rich with insight about basketball, but even richer with insight about life. Just as Rilke has nourished the soul of many a non-poet, this is not a book for athletes per se--it is for anyone with a hunger to do the inner work to be better, to identify the mental constructs that get in the way of an honest pursuit of excellence, whatever the field. It's a book about finding a purpose that is deep and real, not shallow and external, and about navigating success and failure as the twin mirages they are--pushing past fear, past ego, past fatigue to the pure flow of sustained accomplishment in a mesh with teammates who have given themselves to the same thing. Ultimately this is a celebration of the ecstasy of collective achievement, of submerging your self-interest in shared larger goals. Chris Bosh found that flow, and sustained it at the highest level. He misses basketball keenly still, but he has no regrets. Deep, honest, unflinching, this book is his friend's hand up to those coming up behind, whatever their pursuit might be.