http://www.sun-sentinel.com/sports/basketball/heat/ sfl-hyde04may04,0,4261329.column?coll=sfla-sports-heat HYDE: Careers are made or ruined in Game 7 Published May 4, 2004 This is the night that made Jamal Mashburn an eternal choker, Allan Houston a forever nemesis and has haunted this Heat franchise for years. This is the night that made Alonzo Mourning cry, sent Pat Riley into silence and caused Tim Hardaway to utter in despair, "I'm going home, have me a bottle of Grand Marnier and chill out." This is the night of all sports nights. Game 7. Seventh Heaven for one team. Seventh Hell for another. And the Seventh Wonder of the Sports World to every self-respecting sports fan. It's a don't-miss spectacle, a can't-miss night. It's every fingernail you've ever bitten. It's the final page of a thriller, the final hill of a roller coaster, the final and climactic scene of the movie where you see if the good guy makes the good shot for the good ending. Or misses it. Or doesn't even want it. Each possibility comes with its own concrete conclusion, the randomness of sports and the vagaries of life be damned. Perspective is for the rest of the schedule. It's for all those other nights in an 82- or 162- or even just a 16-game schedule, where players can rise, teams can fall, everything is still apt to change and the clich漑f a season being a marathon and not a sprint always holds true. It's a sprint tonight. The usual rules don't apply and the normal boundaries are gone. Tonight's heroes will be headlined forever. Tonight's goats will be as well. Reputations will be cast. Entire careers can be made or muffed, created or cussed, depending on what happens and who makes it so. "This is the kind of game you dream about when you're 9 or 10 and playing all those days on the playground," Heat forward Lamar Odom said. "Everyone wants to play in games like this." When Dwyane Wade floated home a winning basket in Game 1 of this series, and dialed one in from long-distance in Game 5, he became that night's hero and that game's story. But if he does it tonight, he goes forever between the pages of a scrapbook, like a rose petal. Fair? Who said life or basketball was fair? "Life and basketball has a lot of suffering in it," Riley said after the 1999 loss to the Knicks in the fifth and series-deciding game of that series. "We're going to suffer this one." The year before in 1998, after another loss to the Knicks, he said, "I'm feeling empty right now." And a year after in 2000, after yet another loss to the Knicks, Riley had to be hauled out of his office by Mourning and told to do his job in addressing a suffering team. That's what this type of games does, how this No, the Hornets aren't the Knicks, this chippy series isn't that vicious one and this young Heat team not that noble, veteran one. But the meanings are clear, the stakes that obvious, the good and bad capable of being done to reputations that similar. Lost among the losses now is that the Heat beat the Knicks in 1997, winning the seventh and deciding game by 11 points. But imagine how the basketball world would have been different if on this night five years ago Houston's shot had rimmed out instead of bouncing in. What if Mashburn had taken and made that climactic shot in 2000, instead of passing the ball to Clarence Weatherspoon? Wouldn't the course of this franchise be changed? Wouldn't Mashburn and P.J. Brown have remained with the Heat, instead of being traded to Charlotte, which moved to New Orleans, which what stands between the Heat and a celebration tonight. Four years ago, P.J. Brown's face was red and his eyes moist after losing this kind of game. "I really don't know how to feel right now. I'm sad. I'm sad for the fans. I'm sad for the city, for my family, for my friends," he said that night. Now Brown matches up against the Heat's Lamar Odom in good part because of that game. "Game 7 is for it all," he said on Sunday in the Hornets locker room. It's a single game in a singular series that will decide two seasons, players' reputations and, most of all, remind sports fans why they actually became fans once upon a time. There's no other night quite like it in sports. There's no game bigger than a Game 7. Dave Hyde can be reached at [email protected]. Copyright c 2004, South Florida Sun-Sentinel --

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