Miami Heat’s celebration was only a beginning
The three superstars were in back of the massive stage curtains, yet to be introduced, as a giant video screen beamed their highlights to the adoring crowd Friday night. Dwyane Wade, LeBron James and Chris Bosh stood there, heads tilted upward, watching like anybody else. Enjoying the show. Smiling and laughing like little kids.Oh, man!” Bosh shouted into the din.This is going to be fun.This is going to be thrill ride.On his Twitter account Bosh had called this “one of the biggest days of my life.It isn’t just special for fans, this magic that is happening.Love-in. Spectacle. House party. Coronation. Whatever you wanted to call this celebration at Miami’s downtown bayside arena Friday, it was that and more — and louder. Only sports can do this, give us this feeling. Only sports can coalesce this sense of community, of civic pride.It is more than togetherness, this feeling. It is oneness.So South Florida filled a basketball arena on short notice Friday night to mark its own good fortune as the three biggest stars in NBA free agency all appeared in the same uniform, the unfathomable real.Placards pictured all three, Wade in the center. See, because James might be the King, but the court still belongs to D-Wade.This is surpassing a dream come true,” Wade told the idolaters.
This was a Dream Team come true.Arguably the best trio that ever played the game of basketball,” if Wade did say so himself, as the adoring crowd swooned.James wore a white headband that might as well have been a halo for the way he is seen by his new fans.The King didn’t wear a crown, but you get the feeling he’s bringing one with him. Or two or three, perhaps. When itwas James’ turn to address the fans he could not because the jammed arena wouldn’t let him start, so sonic and long was
the ovation.Finally he was asked how it feels to be in a Heat uniform.It feels right,” he said. We’re gonna make the world know that the Heat is back.”James showed up for this welcoming party as the most vilified athlete in America for leaving his hometown Cleveland Cavaliers and doing it the way he did, in a live made-for-TV special.If he turned on the TV or picked up a paper or surfed the web at all Friday he was besieged by not much less than vitriol bordering on hatred.Images of Cleveland fans burning his jerseys in effigy.Signs that read, LEBUM!Accusations of disloyalty and betrayal and even professional cowardice for choosing the easiest path by aligning with other stars.The Cavaliers’ owner, Dan Gilbert, savaged James in an open letter to Cleveland fans.It has been brutal.Oh, but not here.If LeBron needed to feel a little love, needed a group hug, Heat fans delivered.This is just everything we could have hoped,” fan Eric Mendez of Hollywood said, hooking a thumb at his No. 3 wade jersey. “We keep Wade, we get Bosh and then LeBron too? Just no way!It’s like we won the lottery, found a big pile of cash and inherited a million all the same week.Bodog.com already has established the Heat as a 7-4 betting favorite to win the next NBA championship. Only the defending champion Los Angeles Lakers, at 11-4, are in the ballpark.The over/under on Miami victories projects to a regular season record of 65-17.This team isn’t supposed to be really good.This team is expected to dominate, to be scary great.Architect Pat Riley, club president, sat off stage while his bounty accepted the adulation. Riley had done his job, had done what seemed the impossible. He had gotten all three of the three best free agents.Other teams would have killed for one. He hit the trifecta.If Riley announced it was going to snow here tomorrow, there would be on a run on winter coats throughout South Florida.Not since around this time in 1974, when the Dolphins were preparing for training camp after consecutive Super Bowl triumphs, have South Florida sports fans had a right to feel this empowered, this superior, about one of our teams.Things are not supposed to be this perfect, in sports or in life.How long have Dolphins fans waited for the next Super Bowl? Or Panthers fans for the end of their playoff drought?Things are not supposed to go just exactly how your dreamed they would.This summer has for the Heat.It has been worth celebrating.And Friday night? That was only the beginning.
source: miamiherald
