Chris Bosh has been making it easy for us lately to forget where he was not long ago – fearing for his life, worried about his basketball future, and recovering from blood clots in his lung.

Bosh has just been balling lately.

Tuesday against the Lakers he scored a season-high 30 points and posted his fourth double-double in his last five games (last season Bosh had seven in 44 games).

He’s also taken on a strong leadership role with the second unit, moving to center when Hassan Whiteside goes to the bench, and guiding the group to great success late in games.

And –- sort of like the cherry on top –- he’s shooting nearly 40 percent from three-point range, something he said in the preseason he thought he could do.

Basically, Bosh is becoming the player the Heat was hoping he would after he signed a five-year, $118 million max deal, not long after LeBron James bolted for Cleveland and the team needed to fill the void.

Obviously, nobody can really fill LeBron’s shoes. But Bosh is taking his game to a higher level of late and the Heat is benefiting from it.

“I’m happy Chris has found his rhythm,” Dwyane Wade said after Tuesday’s 101-88 win over the Lakers. “Because when he's shooting the ball that way we're a tough team to beat.”

Bosh has been asked to do a lot of things in a Heat uniform. In the beginning he was asked to play a lot of center, to rebound, to sacrifice his scoring and let Wade and LeBron carry that mantle.

Now, coach Erik Spoelstra has asked Bosh to be one of the first starters to head to the bench midway through the first and third quarters so he can move to center and run the Heat’s second unit alongside Tyler Johnson, Josh McRoberts, rookie Justise Winslow, and whoever else Spoelstra want to fit in there.

That group of four -- Bosh, Johnson, McRoberts, and Winslow – has spent 24 minutes together in the fourth quarter (second-most of any Heat quartet) and are a team-best plus-26 so far.

Bosh said Spoelstra came to him with the idea of playing with the second unit down the stretch of games three games into the season. So far, Bosh likes it.

“We just started doing it and it worked pretty well as far as pushing up the tempo with that second group,” Bosh said Monday. “It just allows me to play the center position and play off those mismatches. Me and Josh, we can work well off each other and just kind of speed the game up."

Aside from the success with the second unit, Bosh is also forming a formidable one-two punch in the paint with Whiteside – especially on the defensive end. Although Whiteside is clearly a dominant shot-blocker and rebounder, Bosh has chipped in on the glass and is averaging 9.9 rebounds this season.

He hasn’t averaged double-digit rebounds since his last season in Toronto. His best rebounding season with the Heat was his first year when he averaged 8.3 a game.

Bosh’s three-point shot, meanwhile, continues to improve. A career 32.8 percent shooter from the beyond the arc, he’s connected on 15 of his 39 three-point attempts this season (39.5 percent) including six of his last 12 attempts.

“Throughout the course of this season and these past few games I've gotten some wide open looks. Even the half-contested looks I feel I can make those as well,” Bosh said.

Bosh, who has never made more than the 74 three-pointers he made in 2013-14, is on pace to finish with 153 three-pointers this season. That will probably lead the team unless Gerald Green comes back and goes nuts.

“The thing I like about it is Chris has been putting in a tremendous amount of work behind the scenes,” Spoelstra said. “You've seen it every day. You've seen it the last month. He's the last guy to leave typically, getting his shots before and after practice, really working it and continuing to trust the process when the shot wasn't going. There will be ups and downs. But he’s kept on working on it. And he does so many other things too. His voice, his leadership, commanding guys out on the court -- that's more vital than how well he's shooting.”

> Hassan Whiteside’s 64.3 percent field goal percentage ranks third in the league behind only the Rockets’ Clint Capela (79.5) and the Clippers’ DeAndre Jordan (72.7). Whiteside can send a thank you note to Dwyane Wade.

Last year Wade assisted on 41 of his 243 made field goals (16.8%). This year, Wade has assisted Whiteside on 35.2% percent of his buckets (19 of 54). The next closest player on the team is Luol Deng with six assists. Whiteside’s 18 dunks also rank third in the league behind Capela (19) and the Warriors’ Festus Ezeli (21).

> Goran Dragic is plus-27 combined over his last two games, but you couldn’t tell by what he’s been doing on the offensive side of the floor.

Dragic is 3-for-15 from the field, 0-for-6 from three-point range and has scored just six points with seven rebounds, six assists and three turnovers over his last 55 minutes combined.

“Definitely don't hit the panic button,” Spoelstra said after Tuesdays’ win over the Lakers. “We're not concerned at all -- at all. The storyline changes. The most important thing right now is we're building our identity, really committing to the defensive side of the floor. Different guys will have different impacts on different nights. Everybody is buying into that. He was fantastic in our road win in Minesota. And he'll have a great game again, great games coming up. But what he is a great teammate. We'll get him more involved. He'll find his rhythm consistently."

One of the best finishers at the rim in the league, Dragic is shooting 58.8% (20 of 34) on shots under 10 feet this season, a dip from the 64.9% he shot last year. Where he’s really struggling, though, is on catch and shoots (6 of 14, 42.4%) and pull-ups (5 of 24, 20.8%). Last year he shot 38.8% on catch and shoots (78-201) and 34.9% on pull-ups (98-281).