Miami Heat youngster Jaime Jaquez Jr. was recently recorded touching the Stanley Cup, and that seemed to perturb Bernie Lee, the agent of Heat star Jimmy Butler.
Lee explained that it’s bad luck to touch the NHL’s ultimate prize and added that many NBA players don’t seem to know that.
The Florida Panthers are the reigning Stanley Cup champions. The Panthers won their first Stanley Cup in franchise history after the team beat the Edmonton Oilers in seven games in the 2024 Stanley Cup Finals.
It’s worth noting that Florida almost had a collapse of historic proportions in its best-of-seven series against the Oilers, though. The Panthers led the series 3-0 at one point, but the Oilers responded by winning Games 4, 5 and 6 in order to force a deciding Game 7.
Ultimately, Florida avoided a total implosion, as the Panthers won Game 7 by a score of 2-1 to clinch the Stanley Cup.
While the Panthers succeeded in their quest for a Stanley Cup last season, another professional sports team in the state of Florida — the Heat — has yet to win a title since the start of the decade, even though the squad has come close to reaching the NBA’s mountaintop on more than one occasion in recent years.
The Heat have made the NBA Finals twice since the calendar flipped to 2020.
First, Miami reached the 2020 NBA Finals, where it lost to LeBron James and the Los Angeles Lakers in six games. Fast forward a few years to the 2023 NBA Playoffs, and the Heat represented the Eastern Conference in the NBA Finals once again. But Miami was clearly outmatched against the Denver Nuggets in the championship series, and the Heat were eliminated in five games.
Jaquez is likely hoping that he will help the Heat reach another NBA Finals — and finish the job this time around — in the upcoming season. He averaged 11.9 points, 3.8 rebounds, 2.6 assists and 1.0 steal per contest in 75 games played during the 2023-24 regular season, his rookie season.
Superstitious Heat fans should knock on wood in hopes that Jaquez’s decision to touch the Stanley Cup will not come back to haunt the team.
