Martin Schwartz and Matthew Mandel are having a moment. Actually, two. The lifelong friends hit the sports jackpot this month when the Miami Heat and Florida Panthers both ran the playoff gauntlet and reached the Finals, where they are now competing for the NBA and NHL titles simultaneously.
Schwartz and Mandel, lifelong South Florida residents and friends since college, have shared season tickets to both teams for years. They’ve endured lean years—the Heat won just 15 games in the 2007-08 season—and home games packed with raucous fans rooting for the visiting teams.
They celebrated the Heat’s 2012 and 2013 title runs powered by Dwyane Wade and LeBron James, and reveled in the Panthers’ sporadic playoff runs. But they never believed that both teams would enter the postseason as No. 8 seeds, topple top-ranked clubs in series after series and compete for championships.
“I was very pessimistic when the playoffs started,” said Schwartz, who batted for the Florida Marlins in the 1990s and wore a Panthers jersey during Wednesday’s Heat game when they fell to the Denver Nuggets. “But we’ve come to realize that it’s all about the playoffs. You’ve got to enjoy it. You only get one shot.”
This is the 10th time that two teams from one market have played in the Stanley Cup and NBA Finals in the same year. The last time this happened was in 2016, when the Golden State Warriors and San Jose Sharks (both losers) battled it out for the titles. The Bruins and Celtics have done it three times, going back to 1957, and the Knicks and Rangers twice. But never have a region’s hockey and basketball teams won in the same year.
The championship chase has become a nightly affair in South Florida this week, as the Heat and Panthers play four straight nights at home. Their arenas are about 40 miles apart, and each team has its own core fan base, though some, like Schwartz and Mandel, have taken to both sports. The teams are both 1-2 in their series heading into Friday’s Heat game.
“It almost never happens, so we wanted to try it,” said Raul Arias, a Miami resident who attended the Heat and Panthers games on consecutive nights with his brother, father and friend.
This is the first time two teams in a Southern market have been vying for titles at the same time, but it was inevitable. The nation’s major sports leagues have been pushing into Florida for years, and for good reason: They’re businesses looking for new fans, new sponsors and more TV viewers, and America’s demographics have been tilted toward the South and West for decades.
The Rangers and Bruins have been on the ice since Calvin Coolidge was president. But history is fleeting and, in sports, fleeting. The Heat arrived in Miami in 1988, when Bobby McFerrin’s “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” was a hit. The Panthers joined the NHL in 1993. Since then, six teams — the Columbus Blue Jackets, Winnipeg Jets, Nashville Predators, Minnesota Wild, Seattle Kraken and Las Vegas Golden Knights — have joined the league.
The final between the Panthers and Las Vegas Golden Knights is, perhaps to the dismay of more traditional fans in Canada and the northern states, the ultimate distillation of NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman’s “Southern Strategy.” Bettman has defended this shift despite the financial struggles of teams in Arizona and other new markets. But teams in northern markets, including the Devils and Islanders, have had financial problems. And while teams in southern markets — Atlanta comes to mind — have lost teams, the Tampa Bay Lightning and Dallas Stars are both on solid ground.
Speaking to reporters before Game 1 of the Finals, Bettman’s deputy, Bill Daly, noted that Utah Jazz owner Ryan Smith has also expressed interest in bringing a hockey team to Salt Lake City.
Fans of older teams might groan if another team entered a “non-traditional” hockey market. They already don’t think much of South Florida fans, who are accused of showing up fashionably late to games and leaving early to beat the crowds. They are often characterized as transplants who still cheer for old hometown teams. Or the ultimate burn: they only appear when things are going well and disappear when their teams are in trouble.
That’s all true to a certain extent. But fans are everywhere, including New York and Los Angeles. And while Florida has grown by leaps and bounds, adding millions of new residents In the past decade, some of the transplants here have embraced their newfound athletic advantages. Playoff games are sold out, and some tickets on the resale market have fetched four figures. According to Fanatics, sales of Heat and Panthers gear are up 460 percent since May 1 compared with the same period last year. Sports radio hosts are yapping hoops and hockey, with a little soccer thrown in, after Lionel Messi said Thursday he was joining Inter Miami.
“The more they win, the busier we get,” said Norma Shelow, who has co-owned Mike’s in Venetia, a short walk from the Kaseya Center, for more than 30 years. She said business increases 40 to 50 percent during the playoffs, when fans begin filling the restaurant a few hours before game time.
Shelow said she has a lot of regulars, including NBA referees who stop by after games. But she also welcomes a lot of newcomers, who typically call for reservations, even though the bar is first come, first served.
“I’ve lived here all these years and I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Abel Sanchez, 50, an amateur sports historian. “If one of them wins a title, that’s a moment. If they both win, who has the film rights? And if you want to be a part of it, there’s room.”
It is not uncommon for transplants to adopt a new home team or split their allegiances. My father supported the baseball Giants growing up in New York, but switched his allegiance to the Mets when our family moved to Long Island in the 1960s. (He still loved Willie Mays and took me to see the San Francisco Giants when they came to town). When he moved to West Palm Beach in the 1990s, he adopted the Marlins, who rewarded his loyalty with two World Series titles.
Florida has added about four million new residents in the past decade, including many who have come to Miami from Latin and South America. Some of these newcomers have adopted the Heat and Panthers as their home teams, even though they have never played basketball or hockey. And why not? Cheering on a sports team is perhaps the most communal activity in American life.
“I’m all about Jimmy Butler,” says Adam Trowles, a Brit who splits his time between Miami and London, where he watches Heat games in the early hours. “I would marry him if I could.”
On Wednesday, Trowles was looking for tickets to attend the third game against the Denver Nuggets. The cost was too high, so he and his girlfriend, Gessica Jean, watched the game at Duffy’s Tavern in Coral Gables.
Despite all the fuss, football remains the undisputed king of Florida sports. The Dolphins and Miami Hurricanes are still the stars of the show — when they win. Tampa went wild in 2021 when the Buccaneers won the Super Bowl and the Lightning won the Stanley Cup.
But basketball and hockey have their place. Transplants from Canada and the Northeast and upper Midwest have maintained their loyalty. But over time, new fans are born, even for the Panthers, whose home base at FLA Live Arena in Sunrise, Fla., is wedged between a shopping mall and the Everglades Wildlife Management Area. For locals, it was a parade of riches.
At Quarterdeck, a sports bar 10 minutes from the arena, Tyler Craig watched the Panthers beat the Knights in overtime on Thursday.
“It’s almost exhausting how many games we’ve watched,” he said.
