It’s Not About the Money…It’s About the Sun, the Fun and the Rings!!!

July 9, 2010

They say Rome was not built in a day.  I tell you tonight that the Three Wise Men of Miami have built Downtown Miami within a night.  The Three Wise Men offer not gold, frankincense and myrrh but instead development, commerce and beer.   The drinks will flow in Downtown Miami.  The crowds will cheer, the people will spend and those who might be fortunate enough to witness NBA’s greatest team will be merry.  This is an era of Miami basketball that will be long remembered, but never forgotten.

As I sit in Downtown Miami listening to the sounds of car horns filling the sky, I can only think of one thing.  This is the single greatest moment for the City of Miami.  Bigger than the movie Scarface, which put Miami on the map.  Bigger than Miami Vice.  Bigger than all of the rock stars, models and paparazzi who followed the celebrities in the 1980s to their paradise enclave.  That was their Miami.  Today, I present to you the new Miami.  This is the beginning of something bigger and better than any developer or city official had ever envisioned for the city.  This is Miami Bitch!  And Miami’s Three Wise Men will proliferate an era within Downtown Miami within two years that could never be achieved within two decades.

Miami was the hotbed of the recent national real estate crisis. The epicenter of investor speculation.  The Godfather of mortgage fraud.  Prices tumbled here 50-70 percent from the peak.  It was ripe for the picking.  Miami was where real estate investment dreams were made.  This was it.  This was the moment where five years from now everyone who was fortunate enough to be connected to the City of Miami could say, “Damn…I coulda, shoulda, woulda”.  Tonight was the moment where In one fell swoop, that was all washed away.  Long forgotten.

LeBron and his crew, made up of Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh, made the statement that it’s not about the money…it’s about the sun, the fun, the glitz, the glamour, the neon lights and the championships.  The three perennial athletes proved tonight that it’s more about their legacy than it is about the benjamins.  It has been written that Benjamin Franklin once started off his day by asking the question, “What good shall I do this day?” and ending it with “What good have I done this day?”.  There’s no question that the newly crowned Kings of Miami have done very much good for the City of Miami and ohhhh so much good for Downtown Miami.  It’s not about the money.  It’s about the good of the city and, as I’ve said for weeks, LeBron James joining the Miami Heat, will do more good for the city than ten condo developers building ten glitzy high-rises could ever do for the city.