The curtain has been yanked back on "family" and "trust" and "Heat Lifer" and every other mythological underpinning of a blue-ribbon franchise to the point we've reached this uncomfortable, even unfathomable, predicament.
It's tough enough when Heat fans must choose sides in Wednesday's overdue meeting between multi-millionaire star Dwyane Wade and multi-billionare owner Micky Arison in New York.
It's tougher still knowing the behind-the-scenes bile flowing from both sides. Leaked negotiations? Revisionist relationships? And either the narrative that Wade's a petulant diva (the Heat's take) or that the franchise regularly shortchanged its shining symbol of family (Wade's side)?
Bad times, man. Bad times.
And what makes it all the worse is how empty and exposed the Heat's corporate foundation looks at times like this, how everything they stood for in building championships was a convenient ideal more than any genuine truth.
What about sacrifice? About trust? About, yes, even love?
Because everyone embraced the 2010 story of Wade calling Chris Bosh and LeBron James and asking them to shave $15 million off their contracts to keep "Heat Lifer" Udonis Haslem. Wade, after all, took $17 million off his contract. Haslem cried. Didn't all Heat fans?
But now that Wade threatens to leave "The Family" over perhaps half that much money he once gave up, the front-office storyline is that the Heat can't sacrifice that money.
Now he's cast in darker, more manipulative light, perhaps because of the Dark Lord himself, LeBron James. The pendulum has swung so far, so fast, on Wade that some fans question their belief that he might stand in the corporate suit one day between team President Pat Riley and team legend Alonzo Mourning.
This, of course, is where it's good to have some institutional knowledge. It's good to know bad times often aren't lasting ones. It's even better to know how the seductive myth of the "Heat Lifer" is just that, a marketing tool borne of happy times.
Riley, for instance, created the Heat brand and has run it like a champ for two decades. Everyone knows so. He also met with Los Angeles Lakers owner Jerry Buss back in 2006 and proposed a return to his one-time franchise as general manager.
He'd broker a peace between Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O'Neal. He'd bring back winning ways to the Lakers.
Or does everyone neglect to remember that chapter?
And Mourning? He did exactly what Wade is doing. He went for the bigger money from the New Jersey Nets when the Heat wouldn't give it. The Heat brass hissed over his disloyalty, considering they suffered with him through his kidney disease.
You see, things aren't always so rosy inside The Family, just as they aren't in any family. And the only ones surprised by it are the ones naive enough to buy into the myth in the first place.
This is business. Big, unwieldy, complicated business between big, fascinating and competitive egos. And if it's fun to tout Disney themes and forever love in the good times, there's an equal and opposite truth about careers being marriages of corporate convenience and selfish needs.
Wade is doing exactly what a good many pro athletes do. Who's the patron saint of sacrifice these days? Tim Duncan? Sure, OK. He helped the Spurs. He also put San Antonio through the wringer in free agency, flirting loudly with Orlando before signing for hefty money with the Spurs.
Arison, too, is doing precisely what most team owners do. He embraces the athletes as corporate sons in the best of times and loves their self-sacrifice. But when it was his chance to sacrifice big money in 2013 with Mike Miller he understandably refused.
It wasn't good business for him. Just as it isn't good business for Wade to leave about $8.5 million on the table. That's the difference between the Denver and Heat offers, all leaked to media at a time reporters are runners for agents or teams or, often, both.
Trust? Sacrifice? Family? Maybe we'll get back to hearing about those sweet narratives again with the Heat. Maybe the people saying them again will even believe them.
