The Miami Heat’s winning streak ended at 27 tonight, in a loss at Chicago, and I like to think the surviving members of the 1971-72 Lakers are celebrating somewhere with a bottle of champagne.

Just as the players of the NFL’s unbeaten 1972 Miami Dolphins allegedly do when the latest team to get close to their perfect, 17-0 season fall short.

Those Lakers were a better team than this Heat, and they deserve to keep that record until someone clearly better comes along.

Of course, it’s a dwindling group of Lakers, who might celebrate.

Wilt Chamberlain died in 1999, at the age of 63, and Harold “Happy” Hairston was even younger when he died in 2001 at 59.

They were the center and power forward, respectively, of the team that won 33 straight.

The other starters were Jerry West, who was relentlessly generous about the Heat’s run at the Lakers (when the Dolphins would have been crabby and negative and belittling of how inferior their latter-day “competition” was).

Other prominent members of that Lakers team include Gail Goodrich, Jim McMillian, the shooting guard and small forward, and key reserves Flynn Robinson and Pat Riley, though the latter might have been a bit conflicted, given that he is now the president of the Heat.

But I like to think Riles was at least conflicted, given that he was a player, and not just an executive, on that Lakers team.

In this piece from last year, by J.A. Adande, who may not have been alive when those Lakers ran off their 33 straight, gathered some memories from a reunion of the 1971-72 Lakers.

Even the crabbiest of old vets generally concede athleticism is greater now than it was four decades ago, but we could make a case that those Lakers would have beaten this Heat team, in part because Miami’s weakness is in the paint, and in rebounding.

The Lakers might have had no one to check LeBron James, but West was quite decisive in noting the Heat would have had no answer to Wilt Chamberlain around the rim. And if any NBA player existed who would not have been intimidated by LeBron James, it would have been Wilt.

When those Lakers finally lost, halfway into a road trip that had already taken them to Cleveland and Atlanta, it was to the Milwaukee Bucks of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Oscar Robertson, two of the greatest players in NBA history, who had easily won the NBA Finals the previous season.

They certainly did not lose to a team missing four of its best players, as the Chicago Bulls were (Derrick Rose, Joakim Noah, Marco Belinelli, Rip Hamilton), or a team whose best players were Luol Deng and Carlos Boozer.

So, here’s to the Lakers of 41 years ago. I hope you guys are happy you are still in the record books for “longest winning streak in North American sports”.

People have said it will be a hard record to break, and four decades later “people” have been proven right.