Alexis Jones was eating breakfast with her daddy and watching cartoons in their Weston home on Saturday morning when out of the blue she blurted out, "I have school off on Monday."

Eddie Jones, the Heat's shooting guard and Alexis' guardian, pounced on her comment as though it were a loose offensive rebound. He recognized at once an opportunity to slam home some important points to the 8-year-old.

"Do you know why Monday is a holiday?" he asked his daughter.

"Yeah, because it's Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday," she answered.

"That's right," Jones said. Digging in, he added, "But do you know why that's important?"

"He made blacks and whites get along," Alexis answered triumphantly.

Jones shook his head as he sat in front of his locker at AmericanAirlines Arena later that night, recounting the conversation. He chuckled. If only the world were as crystal clear as it appears through the wide eyes of a second-grader.

"I was, like, `Yeah, but Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. did a lot more than that,' " said Jones, who spent a few minutes explaining to his daughter King's commitment to fighting for one's beliefs without resorting to violence.

She didn't realize it but between mouthfuls of cereal, Alexis Jones was being spoon-fed a meaty ideal.

Unlike his daughter, Jones doesn't get today off. Miami is one of 24 NBA teams that will honor King's memory by working. It makes perfect sense.

The league's 340-odd players aren't just living their dreams, they're living to a large extent King's. In his most famous speech, which he delivered on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in August 1963, a 34-year-old King declared, "I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and sons of former slaveowners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood."

Today the NBA, an enduring marriage between players who are largely African-American and patrons who are mostly white, delivers Houston at Atlanta.

The minority athletes who travel today in first-class comfort owe no small debt to the man who spoke out eloquently against being relegated to the back of a bus. King led the fast break toward equality. He meant as much to the NBA as Michael Jordan even if he didn't do all those miles of marching in his own signature brand of sneakers.

"If some of the younger players don't realize that, some of the older players should inform them," said guard Rod Strickland.

Coming from Strickland, that sounds like an invitation. He is the only Heat player who was alive when King, an ordained minister and charismatic leader of the civil-rights movement, was gunned down by James Earl Ray in Memphis on April 4, 1968.

Strickland was 21 months old. Heat swingman Kendall Gill was born 51 days after King's assassination. Forward LaPhonso Ellis was born two years later, in 1970.

For someone they know only from their history books, many of the Heat players feel an unusually strong kinship with King.

Gill, raised on his grandfather's first-person segregation stories from Mississippi, said he celebrates King's life 365 days a year.

"Everyone should remember what he sacrificed," Gill said.

Ellis keeps tapes of King's speeches in his truck. He said he often listens to them on the way to practice.

Jones thinks of King with every car he rents in Boston. The cars are always nice but they aren't a luxury. He has to have one to get around when the Heat is in town to play the Celtics.

"I've found it damn near impossible to get a cab," Jones explained. "It's crazy. I'll go inside, ask for a cab to be called and when it comes, the driver will slow down, look at me and then keep moving."

Jones shrugged his slender shoulders. It has happened too often in that city to be a coincidence. Some places, Jones has concluded, the color of his skin still matters. Because of King, there are far fewer of them.

Those stories Jones doesn't bother telling Alexis. He tucks them away for another day. "I think she'll see in time what's happening," Jones said.

Being her father's daughter, that's probably when she'll begin to appreciate Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday all the more.