MIAMI _ Chris Bosh always loved a laugh, and there it came again Tuesday night, everyone in American Airlines Arena laughing and cheering and saluting him one final time.
"I'm going to scream again," he said at this end of his speech at the end of his Miami Heat jersey retirement.
That scream. Do you remember? That mouth-stretching, face-contorting, bicep-flexing scream that provided an exclamation point on a big shot, big moment or, in this case, a final send-off to his big night.
Bosh walked around the small podium and let it roar one final time to the rafters where his jersey now hung as the crowd let it loose with him.
"That felt right to do," he said afterward, as the second half of the Heat's consequential game against Orlando began.
Really, if you think about it, what better way to provide a backdrop to Bosh's career than with an extended intermission of the biggest game for any South Florida team in this annual cycle.
It's a game that didn't come close in significance of Bosh's Big Three era. These were two sub-.500 teams fighting for a leg up on the eighth and final playoff spot.
So this night's game meant something, to be sure. Just nothing like it once did. That's not really fair, because we'll never go there again. That really was an underlying message of this night as reminded by a montage of Bosh's great plays or funny moments worked on the scoreboard.
Team president Pat Riley, in his introductory remarks, called it "among the most fun times, best times, that this franchise has known."
Riley then told of that iconic rebound Bosh had in Game 6 of the NBA Finals against San Antonio, followed by his famous assist to Ray Allen's game-tying shot. That, too, was followed by Bosh's momentous block of Danny Green to seal the win and pave the way to the Big Three's second title.
"The Big Three _ a rebound, an assist, a block," Riley said.
It tells how time and priorities march on that as Riley went through this poetic stretch Bosh was policing two of his young children who were bickering on his lap.
"Stop, stop," he said to them.
He joked later about having the, "regular stress of having young children." He's moved on from that complicated end of health concerns to simple ones of raising a family. That allowed Bosh and the Heat to enjoy a night four unmatched years in the making.
There always was the unseen, technical part of Bosh's game where he was considered the league's best big man defending the pick-and-roll in a game built around the pick-and-roll.
There's also the manner he shrunk his ego to assume a smaller role, as he had to, for those championship teams.
"If you want to be a champion, you have to be willing to have characteristics of a champion before you are a champion," Heat coach Erik Spoelstra told his players before the game in addressing Bosh. "CB embodies that. He was willing to sacrifice."
Spoelstra remembered a night when the Heat went down to Indiana in a playoff series, 2-1, and everything was in disarray. A knock came at 2 a.m. on his hotel door. It was Bosh holding a couple of beers.
"A great friend," Spoelstra said. "A great human being."
Dwyane Wade introduced Bosh, too, talking about his learning Spanish and how to play the guitar. Bosh then started to talk and turned to Wade.
"Sorry to beat you to this jersey-retiring thing," he said. "But I had to beat you at something."
A few minutes later, Wade still was running around, still trying to rally a team to the playoffs one final time. It was as big a game as we'll watch in South Florida right now.
It will have to do, even as Bosh's final scream that the crowd made a participatory roar reminded everyone how much bigger the stage once was.
