Thanks to His Cousin, Chris Bosh Lives in Relative Comfort

TORONTO -- After finding a booth in the back of Flo's Diner one Tuesday in December, Adriane Mayes hung her black, full-length bubble coat on a hook, placed her red BlackBerry Curve and pink-encased iPhone on the table and grabbed a seat. She leaned back, adjusted her glasses to rub her eyes, folded her arms and sighed as she glanced at the menu before settling on the usual mushroom and cheddar omelet.

Mayes was hungry, tired and worried. Hungry because it was 11:45 a.m., and she hadn't eaten yet; tired because she had spent most of the morning sending out thank you letters to volunteers for a Christmas party she had organized for about 500 kids over the weekend; and worried because Christmas was a week away and her boss had asked her to come up with the perfect gifts for his co-workers -- the Toronto Raptors.

Her boss is her cousin, Raptors all-star forward Chris Bosh.

The life of an NBA player -- especially an all-star and Olympian such as Bosh -- often needs to be managed like a minor corporation, leaving the player to depend on trusted friends or family members to handle some personal responsibilities that can't be overlooked. It's often up to Mayes, Bosh's personal problem solver, to keep his life manageable. She maps out his monthly schedule, isn't afraid to snoop through his condo to see if he's running low on facial cleanser, and doesn't need to be reminded that Bosh will need some clothes dry-cleaned before a long road trip.

Bosh has little time to shop, so he turns to the person he can rely on in a pinch to get what he needs done, the way he likes it.

This sort of troubleshooting has consumed Mayes's life since Bosh's mother, Freida Bosh, hired her a few months after the Raptors selected Bosh out of Georgia Tech with the fourth pick in the 2003 NBA draft.

Officially, Mayes was hired to be the business coordinator of the Toronto operation of the Chris Bosh Foundation, a charitable organization with branches in Toronto, Detroit and Dallas that provides mentoring and education programs for children ages 5 to 18 at schools and community centers.

Unofficially, Mayes helped her 19-year-old cousin adjust to his new life in a foreign country, while his parents raised their younger son, Joel, in Dallas.

"I thought I was just thrown into helping Chris with this foundation," said Mayes, who is five years older than him. "But for [the first] three years, it was no Adriane. It was all about Chris. He may not even realize it was all about making sure he was comfortable because I was like: 'Wow. Somebody I know is in the NBA.' But I'm getting better. Right now, it's a really good 85 percent," Mayes said, estimating how much of her time is dedicated to the foundation and keeping Bosh's life in order.

Even this late breakfast was related to business. Mayes met with Bosh's representatives -- his agent, Henry Thomas, and Kim Hills, a personal client manager assigned to Bosh -- to discuss their marketing schedule for the Feb. 15 All-Star Game in Phoenix and to make sure the plans don't conflict with his responsibilities to the foundation.

But first, Mayes asked for Hills's advice. She was stumped about the gifts for Bosh's Raptors teammates and wondered if Bosh could simply buy the team dinner in Sacramento, where the team would spend Christmas. Hills told Mayes that she bought the Raptors' front-office employees bottles of Bosh's favorite pinot noir, Au Bon Climat. "I can order some for you," Hills said, and placed a call for 30 more bottles of the wine, which cost about $30 apiece. "It will make it so much easier for you and Chris."

"That's my girl," Mayes said before giving Hills a high-five.