Raptors captain Bosh said Olympic experience changed him as player TORONTO — Every time Chris Bosh folded his six-foot-10 frame into a chair for a U.S. basketball team meeting, from the time the team gathered at the beginning of the summer, the Toronto Raptors captain would cast his eyes on a picture of an Olympic gold medal. "(The coaches) were like 'We want you to visualize this every day, we want you to look at this every day that we're together because this is our goal,"' Bosh said. "Now that we have it, you cherish it a little more." Bosh and his American teammates captured gold in Beijing in an experience he said forever changed him as a basketball player. And that's good news for the Raptors, who open training camp for the 2008-09 NBA season Tuesday in Ottawa. "I have to come back a different dude," Bosh said. "I don't think there's any way I couldn't, even if I tried." For one, he's tasted intense pressure and lived to tell about it. The Americans defeated Spain 118-107 in a thrilling gold-medal game, but led by just four points with under 2 1/2 minutes to play in what Bosh said was the most pressure he's ever felt in a game. "The pressure of that gold-medal game. . . phew, it was tough," Bosh said. "It was crazy, it was ridiculous, just the tension on both sides. "You know how you can feel the tension? Just the crowd, and we know how many people were watching, and we were preparing three years for this opportunity . . . nobody wanted to lose, we couldn't stop them and they couldn't stop us, every possession was so valuable, it was nerve-wracking." The 24-year-old garnered rave reviews from his teammates and the coaching staff for his performance in Beijing, for his energy, his intensity on defence, and the way he kept his head when the game was on the line. In the gold-medal final, Bosh went in with just over four minutes left and the score was close, and was only subbed off in the dying seconds when the Americans had pushed the game out of reach. Canadian Press
