Ring out the old, bring in the new

Talk about your socko start of the season. The ball went up and the Miami Heat abdicated.

Pride still goes before falls, especially when represented by diamond-encrusted championship rings so big that it takes an entire entourage to carry it out to your luxury sport utility vehicle.

So it was that Miami gave out the most dazzling rings this side of the British royal family and, right on cue, took the worst opening-night pratfall by a defending NBA champion.

The record was 15 points before the Heat fell to the Chicago Bulls

As the local press rushed to point out, one game doesn’t mean anything. Nevertheless, this one suggested the Heat’s defense will be as difficult as everyone thought it would.

The Heat still has the game’s greatest tandem; however, with Shaquille O’Neal at 34 and Dwyane Wade feeling the effects of last summer’s tour with the U.S. team after last spring’s playoff run, expectations were closer to 50 regular-season wins than 70.

“I think Miami will be so-so during the season, maybe surprise in the playoffs,” said Phil Jackson, an O’Neal stalwart who went 2-1 in title defenses with him.

“They’ll be cruising a little bit and knowing Shaq and how hard it is for him to get back and 100% in shape, I think it will be a struggle.”

Sure enough, O’Neal, who felt he had something to prove and worked hard before his first two Heat seasons, all but announced that he was easing into this one.

“A lot of people are going to talk about age,” he said, “but my question to all the experts is, ‘Show me a young, energetic team that has won a championship, especially in the last six years.’

“We have the most experience. We know how to pace ourselves.”

Even Coach Pat Riley, the newly reformed taskmaster, reconciled himself to the prospect, noting at the start of camp, “When I was younger, you had to be in end-of-season conditioning, but they’re all in good enough shape.”

“He’s not dealing with a bunch of mid-20s, late-20-year-old guys,” said Riley’s old zealot, Alonzo Mourning, now 36, of their new Club Med. “He’s dealing with some older guys, [and] he knows that the rigors of the season will take its toll.”

By opening night, the Heat’s sensible approach was such a given -- “Heat can mail in regular season; playoffs all that matters,” said a South Florida Sun-Sentinel headline -- Riley had begun to feel as if it was an insult.

“I can understand that they think we were a one-hit wonder, that we got it all together and Dwyane Wade carried us alone and it’s not going to happen again,” Riley said.

“We’ll see what happens. These guys are not overly sensitive. They could care less what writers think, what TNT thinks. If I were an opposing player or coach, I wouldn’t be making statements like that.”

Of course, before they could even start shoving it down everyone’s throat, they had to properly celebrate their accomplishment.

Few owners are as generous as billionaire Micky Arison and few executives as committed to going first class as Riley. The ring they ordered was a diamond-encrusted behemoth with an eight-karat gold image of the Larry O’Brien Trophy. The player’s name was engraved on the side with several team mottos such as “15 Strong.”

True to its buttoned-up style, the Heat refused to say how many diamonds each ring had, what the rings cost or even what they weighed. Citing its own oath of confidentiality, a Jostens representative would say only that it was the biggest one the company had ever made.

The press was allowed to view the rings before the opener -- under tight security with five police officers guarding the table, lest someone try to pilfer one as a 401(k).

Unfortunately, after the ceremony came the game.

With the young Bulls spreading Riley’s aging players out and zipping past them, O’Neal scored seven points, missing seven of 10 shots. Gary Payton, starting at 38 with Jason Williams weeks away after knee surgery, missed four of five shots, as did his backup, an undrafted rookie from Notre Dame named Chris Quinn.

With Antoine Walker turning out to be Antoine Walker, the Heat is a two-superstar-plus-helpers operation ... with one of the superstars going downhill. With the Bulls up, 59-30, at the half, people were asking themselves whether the Heat had really won a championship.

“Drunk on glory, fat on fame and soaked in gaudy 10-carat jewels, your champion Miami Heat opened a new basketball season Tuesday by swaggering and strutting from the throne and then, framed by flashbulbs, falling right on their royal faces,” the Miami Herald’s Dan Le Batard wrote.

“The Heat came to this season-opening Halloween party costumed as the dreadful Atlanta Hawks.... But this one didn’t matter.

“And neither do the next 81.

“Happy Hollow Win, Chicago.”

It’s true. In the NBA, nothing means anything until the playoffs. Just think, six more months to revel in last season.

mark.heisler@latimes.com