The NBA dropped its schedule earlier this week, and buried in the long list of 1,230 regular-season games was a juicy nugget that should make every Orlando Magic fan sit up and start sharpening their social media barbs:
The Magic will open the 2025-26 NBA season against the Miami Heat.
Yes, you read that correctly.
The basketball gods have handed us an opportunity — a chance to stir up a rivalry that has been sitting cold and coagulating on the back burner for far too long. It’s time to put it back on the front burner and turn up the heat (pun very much intended). It’s time to bring back the good ol’ days when Orlando and Miami were at each other’s throats in a battle of civic pride, cultural shade and basketball bragging rights.
But here’s the problem: Many of today’s fans, especially in our transient state, are clueless about Florida’s sports history. They don’t know the back story. They don’t understand why this rivalry even exists. They think Miami is just a trendy vacation destination with a good basketball team while Orlando is the land of theme parks and endless road construction. They don’t realize these two cities were once locked in a knock-down drag-out NBA fight before either one even had a team.
And that’s why I’m here today, banging on my figurative podium once again and yelling into my sports megaphone:
Orlando Magic, you need to start hating the Miami Heat — right now.
Not tomorrow. Not on opening night. Now.
I am officially resurrecting a defunct movement I tried to start more than a decade ago.
H.A.T.E. — Heat Are The Enemy.
And for all of you snowflakes out there, we’re not talking real hate.
We’re talking about sports hate. Sports hate is healthy. Sports hate is fun. Sports hate gets the passions stoked and the juices flowing. Sports hate gives games meaning beyond the standings.
And, good grief, it’s no secret the NBA needs some meaning in its regular season.
One of the NBA’s biggest problems today is that the regular season has all the intensity of a DMV waiting room on Wednesday afternoon. Why do you think the league is trying to spice things up with an in-season tournament? Why do you think load management became a thing? Because the regular season feels like a long drawn-out prerequisite to the real party — the playoffs.
The players are all buddy-buddy now. They hang out in the offseason. They vacation together. They form superteams with their pals. Everybody’s tweeting heart emojis at each other. It’s like a giant summer camp where everybody is friends, and the games? Just 82 episodes of background noise.
You know what’s missing? Hate. Or at least the illusion of hate. The passion that comes from looking at another team and saying, “We can’t stand those guys.” Celtics-Lakers had it. Knicks-Heat had it. Bulls-Pistons had it.
Today? Crickets.
Which brings us back to Orlando and Miami. The Magic and Heat should be natural rivals — they’re two teams in the same state, two franchises born out of the same expansion era, two cities that couldn’t be more different culturally. Orlando is Mickey Mouse. Miami is Scarface. Orlando is family vacations and churros. Miami is bottle service and Lambos.. This is the perfect setup for a sports feud.
But for that to happen, somebody has to start talking trash. Somebody has to light the fuse. Somebody has to pick up the phone and call Pat Riley and say, “Hey, grandpa, it’s time for you to retire to a life of watching Gunsmoke reruns because there’s a new sheriff in town ready to run you out of Dodge.”
Before Magic founder Pat Williams passed away last summer, we used to talk periodically about what fun it was when Orlando and Miami were firing verbal grenades across the state in their NBA border war. It was a civic rivalry that wasn’t born on Twitter or Instagram; it was born in the pages of newspapers and the mouths of civic leaders who were fighting to bring professional basketball to Florida.
Back then, there was a belief that the NBA would award only one franchise to the Sunshine State. And two cities — Orlando and Miami — were fighting like feral cats in a dark alley for an admission ticket to big-league basketball.
Williams, the charismatic GM of the 76ers, left his gig in Philly to lead Orlando’s expansion push. Meanwhile, former Sixers coach Billy Cunningham retired from the bench and led Miami’s effort. Former colleagues became bitter rivals.
And they weren’t afraid to mix it up. Williams was the king of the one-liners, hurling insults that made headlines and made Cunningham fume. One of his classics:
“Crime is down in Miami; they’ve run out of victims.”
Cunningham was so annoyed he called Williams and said, “Let’s keep this above board.”
Spoiler alert: It did not stay above board.
Two of the state’s biggest columnists jumped into the fray. Dave Barry of the Miami Herald called Central Floridians an uncultured bunch of “low-foreheaded, nose-picking yahoos.” Bob Morris of the Orlando Sentinel fired back. It was Florida Man versus Florida Man before Florida Man was even a meme.
And when the dust settled, something unexpected happened: Both cities got teams. The Heat started in 1988. The Magic came along in 1989. And for a brief, shining moment, we had the makings of a true blood feud.
Except … it fizzled.
The Heat took off. The Magic, well, they had their moments — Shaq and Penny, Dwight and Jameer — but they never turned those moments into dynasties. The Heat have three championships and seven Finals appearances. The Magic have zero rings and are still waiting for Fran Vazquez to show up.
Worse yet, the Magic’s darkest day — when Shaq left for L.A. — eventually came full circle when the Big Diesel joined the Heat and helped them win their first title.
And now? The rivalry barely registers on the NBA radar. There’s more animosity between people in the comments section of a YouTube video than there is between Orlando and Miami.
I’ve tried a few times over the years to resurrect the rivalry, and every time it’s gone over like a MySpace relaunch party. Several years ago when LeBron James and Chris Bosh joined Dwyane Wade in Miami, I tried to get the hate flowing by asking both teams about the rivalry.
“I think we have more of a rivalry with Boston,” Magic star Dwight Howard said nonchalantly.
Declared the high-and-mighty LeBron: “We don’t have a rival.”
This blasé attitude between the two teams has to change.
The schedule-makers have given us a gift — Magic vs. Heat on opening night at Kia Center. You couldn’t script it better. Nationally, the Heat are still considered the big dogs in Florida, but they are fading fast while the Magic are coming hard. The Magic are young and talented; the Heat are old and stagnant.
So come opening night, when the Magic run out of the tunnel, I want to feel it. I want to hear it. I want to see the tweets and experience the boos, barbs and banter flying like 3-pointers.
Opening night shouldn’t be just a game.
It should be a grudge.
Email me at [email protected]. Hit me up on social media @BianchiWrites and listen to my new radio show “Game On” every weekday from 3 to 6 p.m. on FM 96.9, AM 740 and 969TheGame.com/listen
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