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MINNEAPOLIS — When the Miami Heat pulled into Ball Arena on Friday night for what turned into a 135-122 loss, the matchup against the Denver Nuggets was a reminder of how fleeting championship contention can be in today’s NBA, a world of salary-cap, luxury-tax, penalty-apron trap doors. No, these were not the same Heat and Nuggets that had met two seasons earlier in the 2023 NBA Finals, each with rotations stripped down from what had gotten each to the top, and, in the case of the Nuggets, over the top. For the Heat, Max Strus, Caleb Martin, Gabe Vincent were gone from the rotation that had fought its way to a Game 5 of that championship series. For the Nuggets, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and Bruce Brown essentially were forced to take their championship rings elsewhere. In an NBA world where the emphasis of the collective-bargaining agreement has been a structure designed to maximize the opportunity for continuity with eased extension rules and limitations on outside poaching, the other side of that very CBA conspired to alter the faces of the 2023 Finalists. Yes, the Nuggets and Heat could have paid to retain each of the aforementioned lost components, allowed to do so under the league’s working agreement … but at a staggering cost. A cost, granted, the Boston Celtics have agreed to pay to run it back, even as ownership moves forward to sell. Which brings us to another matchup two days before the Heat and Nuggets met Friday at altitude. On Wednesday night, in the league’s showcase game of the week in Boston, the Golden State Warriors showed a different side of the stripped-down contender approach. Facing their own massive tax bill, the Warriors allowed Klay Thompson to walk over the summer in free agency, now a member of the Dallas Mavericks.

Abortion rights advocates want to take their fight back to the Florida Legislature armed with a new talking point: Their cause got about as much support from Florida voters as President-elect Donald Trump did. But the appeal is unlikely to persuade a Republican supermajority whose members were mostly lockstep against Amendment 4. That assessment — disheartening though it may be to advocates — rests firmly on an Election Day conundrum: The same electorate that voted 57% in favor of a ballot initiative to protect abortion access also returned to Tallahassee a Legislature nearly identical to the one that approved the six-week abortion ban the initiative sought to overturn. “Most of the people who got elected voted for the bill that we passed,” said incoming state Senator Randy Fine, R-Palm Bay, who served in the House before winning election to the Senate.

Dear Readers: On Sept. 23, I published two letters from older adults struggling to find a connection (“Still Grieving” and “Wants a Connection”). I asked those of you who have successfully found friendship and romantic partnership at a later stage in life to write in. I shared some of those great responses last Thursday and, as promised, some more today. In 2023, United States Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, MD, released a Surgeon General Advisory on what he termed “the public health crisis of loneliness, isolation, and lack of connection in our country.” Even before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, he said, approximately half of U.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: My wife and I were attending a college production of “HMS Pinafore.” A student was sitting directly in front of me wearing a white baseball cap. I could tell the hat was going to detract from my pleasure in the show, so I asked the young man, “Would you mind removing your hat?

The 2024 election is over, and the real-life impact of what voters did is far from clear. People across Florida made their choices, as they also did closer to home in Broward and Palm Beach counties. We accept the results, however puzzling some of them were. Before we get to those, this fact is telling: Fewer people voted in 2024 in Florida than four years ago, even though the state is much bigger now than it was then. Unofficially, 10,986,175 people voted in Florida, compared to a total of 11,144,855 four years ago (returns won’t be official for another week or so). This makes no sense.

Now that a proposed amendment to enshrine abortion access in Florida’s constitution has been defeated, hundreds of volunteers and organizers across the state face the difficult question: What’s next? Will Floridians of childbearing age continue to live under a six-week abortion ban indefinitely? Could restrictions on abortion become even tighter in the state? In the days after the amendment’s defeat, reproductive rights advocates considered next steps.