Miami, This Is Your Time

Now THIS is an NBA Finals matchup that I can get into.

The Mavs against the Heat. Dallas versus Miami. Big D and the Magic City. Dirk Nowitzki and Josh Howard against Shaquille O'Neal and Dwyane Wade. Mark Cuban v. Pat Riley (preferably in a Steel Cage Death Match, TV time remaining). The Mavs Drumline throwing down with DJ Irie - loser has to sit in a dark room listening to John Tesh's complete catalog. Young, vibrant crowds, watching from comfortable seats in lavishly appointed arenas, raising the profile of their hometowns via national television while simultaneously infusing millions of dollars into their local economies through their patronage of ancillary businesses and events.

Sorry. That was for Mike Thomas.

The Mavs and Heat have cool uniforms. They play in great buildings in great cities. Even the dance teams are, umm, widely recognized. Somewhere in New York, NBA execs are exchanging high-fives, Lebron or no Lebron.

Okay, so it's not the Finals I predicted. It's not the Finals anybody predicted. No matter - the peeps are watching. TNT's ratings for the 2006 NBA playoffs are up 14 percent from last year; ESPN is up 22 percent. And, ahem, Sun Sports has done quite well with its exclusive pregame and postgame coverage of every Miami Heat playoff contest as well, thank you. The Tampa Bay Lightning won the Stanley Cup in 2004, and the Florida Gators won the NCAA men's basketball title this spring. One more champion among our television partners won't hurt us. Nope, not one bit.

The Heat become the second NBA team from Florida to reach the Finals, joining the 1995 Orlando Magic, whose starting center was one Shaquille Rashaun O'Neal, eleven years younger and probably thirty pounds lighter. Darrell Armstrong was a rookie on that '95 team. Played eight minutes in three games, scoring ten points. Eleven years later, with over 55,000 regular season minutes of NBA basketball between them - that's 38 days of continuous hoop - the players they called "Baby Boy" and "Big Fella" in '95 line up on opposite sidelines in the Finals.

Armstrong was not on Orlando's playoff roster in '95, so this is his first trip to the medal round. The same is true for every other Maverick, save one: Keith Van Horn, who, along with the rest of the New Jersey Nets, got swept in the '02 Finals by Shaq and the Lakers.

On the other bench, Gary Payton first reached the summit as a Sonic in 1996, only to get buzzsawed by Jordan, fresh off the baseball thing. Shandon Anderson feels his pain; MJ did him twice in Utah in '97 and '98. Payton took another lump in 2004 during his ill-fated cameo with the Lakers, losing the Finals to Detroit. In case you're scoring at home, that's zero rings in five chances for the three players in the 2006 Finals who have actually been here before.

The three players other than Shaq, that is. The Diesel brings three titles and one loss with the Lakers, plus one loss in Orlando, for a total of five previous Finals appearances.

Impressive, but not as impressive as his head coach. Pat Riley makes his staggering ninth appearance on the mountaintop as a head coach: four titles, all with the Lakers. He's also lost four times, three with L.A. and once with the Knicks. His Dallas counterpart, Avery Johnson, is batting 1.000 in Finals appearances as a player, having earned a ring with the Spurs in '99.

As they step into this brave new world, the Heat are obviously lucky to have the experience of Riley and O'Neal on their side. For that matter, those two men have more to do with Miami's presence in the '06 Finals than anyone. In the days to come, you're going to read a zillion articles about their legacies in the league; I have one request for both.

I hope that Riley and O'Neal will take the time to explain the magnitude of this opportunity to the Heat organization. The entire organization. I'm thinking full-staff meeting at the Triple-A. Ticket sales reps, broadcasters (like my man Eric Reid, who's waited nearly twenty years for this), community relations staff, interns, DJ Irie, everybody. They need to hear it.

Here's why: in 1995, when the Orlando Magic rolled to the NBA Finals against Hakeem Olajuwon and the Houston Rockets, I was finishing my first year as a full-time employee in the Magic's broadcast department. A young pup, like everybody else in that front office. Shaquille O'Neal was in his third year in the league; second-year guard Penny Hardaway was already one of the five best players in the NBA. The rest of the starting five - Horace Grant, Nick Anderson, Dennis Scott - were all in the prime of their careers, all under the age of 30. The Magic had closed the Boston Garden in the first round. They shut down the mighty Bulls in the second round, catching Jordan while he was shaking off his Birmingham Baron rust. They looked the Pacers in the eye in the Eastern Conference Finals - the mean, nasty Pacers of Reggie, Smits, McKey, Byron Scott, Mark Jackson, Haywoode Workman, Sam Mitchell, and the still-bouncy Davis Boys - and stared them down in seven games. Orlando was loopy. This was only the beginning. We thought it would never end.

Boom.

Missed free throws led to a Kenny Smith three, which led to an Olajuwon putback, which led to a sweep, which gave way to 60 wins the following season, which brought back an angry Jordan, which was followed by Shaq bolting to La-La Land (for less money), which placed the burden on Penny, who ended up in Phoenix, and the next thing we knew, it was "Heart and Hustle" and a conga line of bad draft picks and new head coaches. I'm glazing over ten years of NBA basketball, but that's how quick it felt. A snap of the fingers. Dwight Howard, Jameer Nelson, Darko Milicic, and 16 wins in 22 games may have lifted the franchise's momentum this spring, but it was a very long time coming.

We thought it would never end. That's the message that I'd be drilling into heads on Biscayne Boulevard right now. This must be your time, because it can vanish in a heartbeat.

Pat Riley knows this, of course, probably better than anyone. I'm sure he had at least a similar thought as he cradled the Larry O'Brien trophy for the fourth time in 1988 - "I'm just getting warmed up." That was eighteen years ago. If anyone can convey the message of desperation, it must be Riley.

My words of wisdom to the Heat players, and to Eric, and DJ Irie, and Mike B, and the Heat Dancers, and the interns, and the guys in the ticket office, and Boris Becker, and Jimmy Buffett, and every Miami fan who laid down his money for years in hopes of seeing this moment: savor it. Revel in it. Take pictures. Keep a diary. You earned it, so enjoy it. But don't waste it. Tomorrow, it could be gone, and in this league, there's absolutely no guarantee that you'll ever get it back.

Make this your time. The only thing that never ends is the glow of a championship.