AS BEFITS an Anglophile multibillionaire whose recent business trips to Britain included shaking hands with the Queen as she launched his newest cruise liner, the Queen Mary II, in Southampton two years ago, Micky Arison, the Miami Heat owner, operates with a large decree of decorum.
Arison would have been forgiven yesterday, however, if his composure wavered in the closing seconds of his basketball team’s 98-96 victory over the Dallas Mavericks in game three of the NBA Finals.
The victory still leaves the Heat trailing 2-1 in the best-of-seven series but, having been behind by as many as 13 in the fourth quarter, Miami, to use an analogy their owner might not appreciate, were sinking fast until Dwyane Wade took control.
Arison, 56, is chairman and chief executive of the Carnival Corporation that owns, among many other companies, P & O Cruises, Cunard, Ocean Village and Swan Hellenic in the UK. It is a portfolio that leaves his personal worth at an estimated $5.8 billion, about a third of Roman Abramovich’s reported fortune, but still enough to help Miami assemble a team capable of taking them to their first Finals this season.
“Often in the past I have been in Europe, watching the Finals on Sky [TV] at this time of year,” Arison, who has a British wife, Madeline, and whose children hold British passports, said. “To be involved in them is amazing. Both in Dallas and here, the TV ratings have been great, we’ve had everybody decked out in their white gear. It’s been fun.”
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Arison, as chairman of the NBA’s Board of Governors, is arguably the most influential owner in the league at present, yet operates well below the publicity radar that is so beloved by his Dallas counterpart, Mark Cuban, a self-styled and extrovert Mavericks fanatic, who sits next to his team’s bench, looks in during time-outs and collects fines and suspensions for outlandish behaviour and comments in the same way Arison collects cruise liners.
“To me, what’s important, whether it’s in entertainment or in business, is results,” Arison said. “And Mark has got results. There is a lot of excitement in his building and he’s got his team to the Finals, so I’ve got nothing but good things to say about what he has accomplished. They’ve produced results there, that’s what counts.”
Those results should still include a first NBA title for Cuban and his club, but Miami’s resilience and the sublime play of Wade, 24, at least ensured that the Heat avoided a possible 4-0 sweep and breathed life into the series.
It had not appeared so destined as Miami were outscored 34-16 in the third period, turning a 52-43 interval lead into a 77-68 deficit. With a little more than eight-and-a-half minutes left in the game, the unstoppable Wade had collected a costly fifth foul and Miami trailed 83-71.
Wade, with his team still trailing 89-78 more than two minutes later, had other ideas, however, scoring 12 of his game-high 42 points over that stretch despite the concern of a sixth foul hanging over him. With Shaquille O’Neal a factor, if not the force of old, with 16 points and 11 rebounds, it was enough for a remarkable and tense victory.
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“I kept looking up at the score thinking, ‘I ain’t going out like this!’” Wade said. “You just try to do what you can to help your team get over the hump. If you make some plays it might energise some other guys and that’s what I did. It was a total team win and I think it’s going to help us out for the next game.”
Which is tonight, when another Heat victory would turn the series on its head. “I’m absolutely, without a doubt, a true believer,” Pat Riley, the Miami coach, said of his team’s prospects. “Even during that fourth quarter. I know players, I’ve been around players for 40 years and you’ve just got to keep trying to get them to dig, dig, dig. We know we can play better than we played tonight, but this win takes us on to another day.”D: white; MA