Heat will burn Mavs

After years of being e-mailed as among other things "a blockhead,'' "moron,'' or ''an utter loser,'' through e-mails, I now take to blogging as a new way to present opinions and accept abuse. And since this is June, let's talk NBA Finals.

The Miami Heat will defeat the Dallas Mavericks to win their first NBA Championship. While this victory will hardly lift the NBA out of its post-MJ lethargy, it will give South Florida something to celebrate.

And let's face it, the sports scene down there has seen better days. The Dolphins, long the darlings of the market, haven't been to the Super Bowl since 1984 and are currently upset that their three-time drug loser running back can only play up in Canada. The Marlins are now baseball's version of strip mining experiment gone bad. Good luck in San Antonio, or Las Vegas, or Portland.

South Florida used to boast about those rambunctious but successful University of Miami Hurricanes. But then they entered a real league (the ACC) and the football national championships now seem a more distant memory than Crockett and Tubbs on "Miami Vice.''

So Shaq and Dwayne Wade now must come to the rescue for the Heat, who in their late 1980s incarnation were even worse than Don Johnson's singing career. Now we're not crazy about that Brutus-Julius Caesar number America's original slick boy-Gordon Gekko clone, Pat Riley, pulled on hapless former Miami coach Stan Van Gundy. But desperate times call for desperate measures.

Which brings us to what we as Americans don't need as sports fans _ namely bad-haircut, hey-look-at-me Mavs owner Mark Cuban hoisting the NBA championship trophy. Didn't he irritate us enough with that horrendous reality show? And remember the time he tried to run on the court to join his team in a fight? A new low in pitiful.

And when you don't really have a team to pull for _ which is where most of America stands in this one _ go with the city you'd like to visit most. Let's see with Miami you have South Beach nightlife, beautiful women, great weather and exotic restaurants. With Dallas, you have guys in cowboy hats, women that plot murders over cheerleader tryouts, tornados and overpriced Tex-Mex food. Hmmm, sounds like a tough one.

As for the actual basketball, look for lots of curious collisions between Shaq and the frauds playing center for the Cubanos, a 45-point game from superb Mavs star Dirk Nowitzki and way, way too much "analysis'' from ABC's incomprehensible duo of Hubie Brown and Bill Walton.

The Heat in six. Let's all celebrate in South Beach.