You can never take back your final conversation with a dying relative, and the last words I ever remember uttering to my nearly lifeless cancer stricken grandfather wasn’t some deep insightful realization about what he meant to me or advice on how to become a successful man with a nice suit and a hot wife.
“Poppy,” I said to the man who was so sick, he told the nurse to bring him an original Coke, with diet no longer able save him, “the Heat just traded for Jamal Mashburn. They’ve really made it.”
Poppy died, the Heat wouldn’t reach the NBA Finals for nearly a decade, but if you were a 14-year old South Florida sports junkie you felt on top of the sports world. Alonzo Mourning, Tim Hardaway and Jamal Mashburn? That’s a hell of a team that people will notice.
Miami, of course, still belonged to Gloria Estefan, Scarface, glamour, glitz, crime, cocaine, sunbathing strippers on South Beach, Spanish billboards and shiny buildings. No more.