Miami had a chance for 2 champions at the same time, but came up short

It could have been a banner weekend/Juneteenth holiday for Miami, Fla., as the Heat of the National Basketball Association and the Florida Panthers of the National Hockey League each had a chance to be the champion of their respective league at about the same time on the calendar. Unfortunately for the city, not only did one of these not happen, but they both ended up not taking place.

Each championship series, the NBA Finals and the Stanley Cup Finals, were decided in five games, and with each victor winning the decisive game at home.

In the NBA Finals, after the Heat got a Game 2 win in Denver, the Nuggets won the next three games, with two of those coming in Miami, to win the first NBA title in the 47-year history of the franchise on Monday night in “The Mile High City.”

In the Stanley Cup Finals, the Panthers lost the first two games to the (Las) Vegas Golden Knights, but got back into the series with a Game 3 home win in Sunrise, Fla. However, the Golden Knights took Game 4, then won their first Stanley Cup in the franchise’s six-year history by clawing the Panthers in Game 5 on Tuesday night in Las Vegas.

Obviously, it’s good to see two new teams win championships, but can you imagine what the scene might have looked like on South Beach and Miami, in general? It would have marked the first time in history that would have happened. There have been cities to win two championships in the same calendar year, but not within days of each other.

One example happened in 2009 when the Pittsburgh Steelers won Super Bowl XLIII 27-23 over the Arizona Cardinals on Feb. 1 at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Fla., followed by the Pittsburgh Penguins outlasting the Detroit Red Wings 4 games to 3 to win the NHL’s 2008-09 season’s Stanley Cup Finals that ended that following June.

Go back five years to 2004. The New England Patriots edged the Carolina Panthers 32-29 in Super Bowl XXXVIII at Houston’s Reliant Stadium (now known as NRG Stadium) on Adam Vinatieri’s game-winning field goal on the last play of the game after the Panthers tied the game at 29 on Jake Delhomme’s 12-yard touchdown to Ricky Proehl and John Kasey’s extra point with 1:08 left in regulation to almost set up the first overtime Super Bowl game in history (by the way, fans would have to wait 13 years until Super Bowl LI at the very stadium SB XXXVIII took place to see the first Super Bowl game to go into OT to be decided when the Patriots outlasted the Atlanta Falcons 34-28 after Matt Ryan’s Falcons had built a 28-3 lead in the third quarter). I always will have a special place for Super Bowl XXXVIII in my heart as I was one of the many lucky sports reporters to get to cover the event live for The Daily Ardmoreite as I was in between a sports writer from Allentown, Pa., and Melbourne, Fla. Yes, it is the same SB in which the halftime show saw the “Wardrobe Malfunction” take place featuring Justin Timberlake and Janet Jackson (although I was actually busy writing my sidebar column and truly didn’t see it, but where I sat everyone on the field looked as big as my pinky finger). To start the second half, someone came out in a referee’s uniform, then streaked at midfield. It was about 60 to 90 seconds before security actually realized what was happening.

Anyway, getting back to my column, after the Patriots won Super Bowl XXXVIII, that following October the Boston Red Sox swept the St. Louis Cardinals to win the 2004 World Series.

Miami had a chance to see something never done before, a city’s professional NBA and NHL teams, whose seasons always coincide, win their respective league championships and both being from the same city.

We’ll have to wait until the NBA and NHL playoffs of 2024 to see if their champions end up from the same city, making it the first time in sports history it will happen.

Seeley is sports editor of Your TIMES. He can be reached by telephone at 918-775-4433 or by e-mail at davids@cookson.news.