Chris Bosh regains his shooting touch at United Center

Chris Bosh returned to the scene of his slime Sunday night and redeemed himself by scoring a game-high 30 points on 12-for-18 shooting.

That’s a far cry from his 1-for-18 shooting the last time he and his ­Miami Heat mates played in the United Center.

“But it wasn’t enough,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said after the Bulls beat the Heat 103-82 before a sellout crowd of 22,874 to take a 1-0 lead in their best-of-seven-game Eastern Conference final.

“He’s important to what we do. Everybody knows that. And they were loading up their defense so much [against Dwyane Wade and LeBron James] off the dribble that he was able to be a recipient in the paint. But we need more offensively. But before we even talk about that, we need to finish our defense with all the effort and big-muscle areas and we did not do that tonight.”

Bulls coach Tom Thibodeau said he definitely was not expecting a repeat of Bosh’s nightmare.

“Bosh has been a very good player, a great player, in this league for a long time,” Thibodeau said. “Every great player will have a game like that once in a blue moon. So we knew the likelihood of that happening again was remote.

“But we’ve got to do a better job on him. And they put a lot of pressure on you. They execute and they spread you out. They’ve got guys that can go off the dribble and you have to have a multiple effort ­mentally. [Bosh] is a hard guy [to guard]. He’s got a quick release. He plays off his jam extremely well. He can hurt you inside on the rolls. He can face you up. So he can score in a lot of different ways.”

And the 6-11 center-forward did just that Sunday. He added nine rebounds to his night’s work. In fact, he was the Heat’s star in this game. And he played so well that he relegated Wade and James to reserve roles in the postgame interviews. He was the only Heat player brought out to the interview podium. Wade, who scored 18 points, and James, who scored 15, held court in the locker room.

But with all due respect. I don’t believe Bosh when he said that he paid little attention and had limited memory about that night when his shooting touch went totally awry.

“You have tough games and you have great games,” said Bosh, who also went 6-for-6 from the line on Sunday. “But that game never even entered my thought process, You make mistakes, you learn from them and you go on. What we have to do is look at where we fell short as a team and come back and do a better job [in Game 2 on Wednesday night].

“We shot out own selves in the foot. We did not move our bodies and we did not move the ball like we should. We certainly will have to do a better job of defending and rebounding. We’ll dissect this game, look at what we did wrong and make the necessary corrections.”

Bosh scored 17 of his points in the first half. But the Heat did not flash the balance it has had in the past when Wade and James usually dominate the stats.