There are many players who are called tough guys in the NBA league, such as Karl Mallon, Ben Wallace, Artest, etc., but old fans know that the Heat have a famous tough guy Alonzo Mourning in history. Today, the Heat won the NBA Eastern Conference Finals championship, and Mourning, vice president of development for the Heat, presented Butler with the Eastern Conference championship MVP trophy.
Alonzo Mornin graduated from the famous basketball university Georgetown University, where he has trained excellent centers in the league such as Mutombo and Ewing. Mourning was a 1992 draft pick and was selected by the Charlotte Hornets, and that year's winner was O'Neal the Sharks.
After Mourning was traded to the Heat in 1995, he began his "Heat tough guy" journey. With the Heat, Mourning won the league's Defensive Player of the Year twice and finished first in the regular season in the 1998-1999 shrinking season. That's right, that year, the Miami Heat were "black eight". The previous season, the Heat were eliminated by the New York Knicks and broke out the worst on-court violence before the "Auburn Hill Palace Incident", the protagonists of the incident were Mourning and Knicks' "aunt" Larry Johnson, and contributed to the scene where Mourning dragged Rockets coach Jeff Van Gundy several meters to continue fighting.
In the Heat's "Black Eight" season, Mourning, who had just won the best defensive player, was very energetic and ranked second in the regular season MVP rankings, and he very much hopes to lead the team to achieve good results. But the top-ranked Heat played against the similarly styled "sworn enemy" Knicks, the first four games were tied 2-2, and in the last 0.8 seconds of the fifth game under the defense of Mourning, "mid-range shooting king" Houston used a throw-and-shoot to make Mourning regret.
In the 2000 Sydney Olympics, the United States sent players led by Carter, Garnett and Mourning to participate in the Olympics, and 2.08 meters Morning as the starting center, averaging 10.2 points and 4.2 rebounds per game to help the team win the Olympic gold medal. During the Olympics, Mo Ning also staged a scene of "iron man tenderness", when he learned that his wife was about to go into labor, he immediately flew back to the United States, rushed to the delivery room 17 minutes before the birth of the child, and returned to Sydney to participate in the rest of the competition after the baby was born.
Returning to the NBA, Mourning was diagnosed with severe kidney disease during a team checkup and subsequently underwent a kidney transplant. After fulfilling his big contract with the Heat, Morningn took a pay cut to the Nets in 2003-04, during which he retired twice.
In the 2005-2006 season, the big sharks O'Neal and Wade of "East Journey" invited Mourning to join the team to compete for the championship, and the 35-year-old Mourning chose to join. That season, Mourning played 65 games for the Heat, averaging 20 minutes per game as O'Neal's backup, averaging 7.8 points, 5.5 rebounds and 2.7 blocks per game, especially when "Shark" O'Neal was injured, Mourning became the pillar of the Heat, starting 20 games.
The 2005-2006 Finals Heat played against the Dallas Mavericks led by Nowitzki. The Heat lost two games in the Finals and then pulled back two to tie 2-2. In the crucial fifth game of the Battle of King Mountain, when O'Neal's performance was sluggish, Mourning supported the Heat's interior line, scored 6 rebounds and 5 blocks and narrowly defeated the Dallas Mavericks.
The Heat, who eventually overcame the battle of Tianwang Mountain, defeated the Mavericks 4-2 and won the championship, and Mourning also fulfilled his 14-year career dream.