Parades left to imagine: The what ifs and what’s next for the Miami Heat and Florida Panthers | Opinion

The championship parades would have been right around now. The Miami Heat’s would have been on the familiar route along Biscayne Boulevard downtown, near the arena. The Florida Panthers’ maiden celebration was planned as a boat parade on the Intracoastal in Fort Lauderdale.

We reflect on two months of building exhilaration, disappointment at the finish line, but an overriding feeling of positivity and appreciation as we imagine what’s next for the Miami Heat and Florida Panthers.

These things we take from what two teams have just done — done for us, a South Florida community fractured by politics and so much else but still able to join hands and raise voices as one. Cinderella had on sneakers one night, skates the next for two No. 8 seeds’ magical, historic runs to the NBA Finals and Stanley Cup Final.

We had never seen that before, together at once, and might never see it again.

It punctuated a spring-into-summer for the ages in South Florida sports.

Lionel Messi announcing he will play for Inter Miami ... as the Heat and Panthers play for league championships ... and even the Miami Marlins are winning ... as the Dolphins prepare to enter training camp the best they have been in years ... after Hurricanes men’s basketball reached the Final Four.

It has been not short of a collective renaissance.

The feelings are more complicated, though, as we reflect on the concurrent Heat and Panthers journey.

For me, there also is a sense of great and rare opportunity lost, times two. The parades on our mind. These were not two typical eight seeds in happy-to-be-here mode. They were would-be champions both, but for that small whisper (“What if...?) that might never go entirely away.

The Denver Nuggets earned their Thursday championship parade and the Vegas Golden Knights deserved their Saturday coronation. Yes, yes.

But what if the Panthers had not had a handful of key players toughing through broken bones toward the end including scoring star Matthew Tkachuk missing the final game and being limited the two prior?

“We didn’t need puck luck,” as coach Paul Maurice put it. “But we ran out of health luck.”

And what if the Heat had not been missing 20-point scorer Tyler Herro nearly the entire postseason to a broken hand? What if Jimmy Butler, never admitting it as an excuse, had not been limited by an ankle injury that caused Playoff Jimmy to fade by degrees?

Another question comes to mind:

Did it really even happen? Heat and Panthers playing in the championship round?

Because I don’t see the residual effect, the respect. The early betting odds for the 2024 season disrespect both teams. They shout out that both were just eight seeds that got awfully lucky.

Consider:

Betting odds for the 2024 NBA title have Denver on top at 4-1 and Boston next at 13-2. Miami is 12th (!) at 22-1. Just ended second. Start out 12th. Tha’s mid-pack, unheard of for a reigning Finals team. An insult, actually.

Odds for the ‘24 Stanley Cup Final have Boston (whom the Cats beat) on top at 8-1 and Vegas next at 9-1. Florida is tied for eighth at 14-1. That’s more reasonable than the Heat’s slot, but still low for a team straight outta the Final and returning all its core players.

One certainty. Neither Heat nor Panthers can stand pat. Here is our to-do list for two teams trying not to equal this past season but to take it one step further:

Heat’s to-do list

▪ Add a scoring star: And do it this and do it this summer. Build onto Jimmy Butler and Bam Adebayo. Consider everybody else expendable along with future draft picks in trading for Damian Lillard (strong preference) or Bradley Beal. Miami was last in the NBA in points last season. Butler needs to be your second-best player, not No. 1.

“I’m not a scorer,” Butler himself said during the Finals. “Just because I score a lot of points one game doesn’t make me a scorer. I’m not a volume shooter. I don’t press to score. If I pass the ball every possession [and] we win, I don’t care.”

▪ Need size and rebounding help: Adebayo had a great Finals, but when Bam at 6-9 is your only reliable big man, you have a problem. It was a problem against Jokic. And it will be a problem getting out of the East against a healthy Giannis Antetokounmpo and reigning MVP Joel Embiid.

Miami was outrebounded in every round this postseason, including by 44 in the five-game Finals. Not sustainable.

▪ Better luck with health: Miami eked in as a No. 8 seed because it used 26 different starting lineups and missed the fourth-most man-games to injuries. It was by necessity not luxury that four undrafted players became key components. Dealt that hand, coach Erik Spoelstra had one of his more difficult tasks and best results to somehow navigate this broken ship to the Finals.

Panthers’ to-do list

▪ Solve special-teams problem: Florida was as good 5-on-5 as anybody. Put the penalty box in play, in either direction, and the problems began. It was especially evident in the Final, when the Cats were 0 for 14 on the power play but allowed seven power-play goals (in 19 tries) to Vegas.

▪ The goaltending from here: Sergei Bobrovsky was mostly really good this postseason, but his time with the club has not been as consistently good, and he will turn 35 as next season starts. Is the main starter’s job still his, or will Alex Lyon gets a shot to compete? Is Spencer Knight still seen as the goalie of the future? I don’t need to know. But the Panthers do.

▪ Add talent, depth: Florida returns 16 of its 20 main players under contract next season. Unlike with the Heat, this should not be a summer of big change on the hockey side. But Florida must add depth so that even the fourth line on the ice a strength, not something to hide. Top-to-bottom depth was a big Vegas edge in the Final.

For the Heat and Panthers both, there is a danger now in the assumption of automatic momentum, the claim to it.

“There’s no stopping here,” as the Panthers Aaron Ekblad put it, “there’s no stopping us now.”

I would sooner buy the realism from the relentlessly honest coach, Maurice. When asked what to expect from next season, he said: “We’ll fight just to make the playoffs.”

He didn’t mean Florida will regress. He meant the NHL’s parity is that great. Same with basketball.

Heat and Panthers players both carry with them the prize unfortunately earned, the experience you can only bank if you have lived it, suffered it.

Both watched on the road as other teams and their fans celebrated in joyously packed arenas.

As other teams lifted the championship trophies they thought were theirs.

That will always be the kind of fuel you only get from hurt.

And the kind of hurt you can only get past with a championship parade.