Miami Heat Parade 2012: What Fans Should Expect from Victory Celebration

It’s a celebration in South Beach this Monday, as LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh will celebrate their first championship together in downtown Miami.

Unfortunately, he NBA doesn't have the elaborate Stanley Cup celebration following the title-clinching game. Therefore, the NBA ticker-tape parade has become the focal celebration for the championship team.

Here’s what to watch for during Monday’s festivities in South Beach.

LeBron’s “Coronation” 

The Heat Championship Parade will be the world’s first glimpse of LeBron James since championship night. Eight years in the making, watching the league MVP stroll down Brickell Avenue is must-see television for any basketball aficionado. 

The King finally has a ring. He took his talents to South Beach, and now he’ll get to wave the championship banner there.

The Heat Veterans Hoisting Their First Trophy

With many longtime veterans on the Miami roster, this championship will be many players’ first championship parade. The Shane Battiers, Mike Millers and Juwan Howards, to name a few, accepted their role and took less money for a chance to win it all. Now they’ll see their dreams come true as they ride through downtown Miami on Monday.

Battier is the only Heat member to win an NCAA title, but it took him 12 years and several teams to even reach an NBA Finals. Both Miller and Howard had played in NCAA Championship games but combined went 0-3.

Let’s not forget about the often-forgotten Chris Bosh, who played his best defensive basketball in these NBA Finals coming back from injury. Perhaps the most under-appreciated Heat player on this roster, Bosh wrote the book the last two seasons on how to play the third fiddle on an NBA champion. His first title has been well deserved.

Will There Be a Guarantee of a Repeat?

Pat Riley called for a repeat as the Lakers coach in 1987, when no NBA team had won back-to-back titles in 18 years. In addition, the Heat’s Big Three called for “not five, not six, not seven” at their glamorous Welcome Party two years prior.

A promise of a repeat would bring back the intense pressure to win the title that propelled LeBron and D-Wade to win in Year 2. Whether that pressure was a gift or a curse, though, remains to be seen.

With the title window wide open for this Miami Heat team, a call for a repeat would not be far-fetched. 

My money is on Eddy Curry to make the call.