Comment on Champions crowned in week of thrills

General Daily Insight for December 21, 2024 Serious is as serious does. The Sun is parading into capable Capricorn at 4:21 am EST, hitting the start button on a thirty-day cycle when we can all make impressive progress on our long-term goals and ambitions. Meanwhile, the Moon in Virgo will oppose stoic Saturn before squaring off excitable Jupiter, so we may feel stretched between a serious approach and something more freewheeling.

MIAMI – Observations and other notes of interest from Friday night’s 104-97 loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder: – If there is a Jimmy Butler trade. – And that remains a big if. – And if it’s not necessarily for a replacement at small forward. – Then this might have been a preview of what could come next. – With Jaime Jaquez Jr.

MIAMI — Ultimately, this was a stomach-turning, painful reminder of the level of competition in the NBA — particularly for Jimmy Butler and Bam Adebayo. Faced with the challenge of the best of the NBA West, the Miami Heat wound up shorthanded and came up short Friday night in a 104-97 loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder at Kaseya Center. With forward Jimmy Butler exiting for the night in the first quarter with a stomach illness, and with center Bam Adebayo forced to retreat to the locker room in the third for seven stitches above his left eye, the Heat now have followed up their season-best four-game winning streak with a two-game losing streak. “Doing it on the fly without Jimmy, you just have to do whatever you have to do to try to get it to a possession game,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said.

SUNRISE — Aleksander Barkov scored a power-play goal with 18 seconds left in overtime, giving the Florida Panthers a 2-1 win over the St. Louis Blues on Friday night. Oskar Sundqvist got his third goal of the season for St. Louis, coming midway through the first period. Uvis Balinskis got his first of the season for Florida, with Barkov and Matthew Tkachuk assisting midway through the second. It stayed that way until the 65th minute, when Barkov ended it with his 10th goal of the season. The score followed an elite sequence where Barkov took possession of the puck among numerous Blues in the St.

Two men are now facing charges in connection with a shooting on Florida’s Turnpike in Broward County this June that killed a mother and her 4-year-old daughter, the Broward Sheriff’s Office said Friday night. Antoine Harris, 28, and Jaquan Thomas, 29, are each facing two counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of Beatrice Saintvil, and her daughter, Janelle Souffrant.

MIAMI GARDENS — The South Florida Sun Sentinel’s Miami Dolphins writers are picking out a pair of prop bets each week in the 2024 season. Dolphins columnist Chris Perkins and Dolphins reporter David Furones, neither of whom condones gambling, will make predictions on player or team props they believe will occur for every Dolphins matchup. Each writer will offer their “Best Bet,” a near 50-50 proposition they believe will occur, and a “Longshot,” which has to be given betting odds of at least +300, or 3-to-1 probability. Odds are according to the Hard Rock Bet app.