Morning Mail: Are the Miami Heat staying in a haunted hotel in Oklahoma City?

From now on when the Heat lose a game in Oklahoma City, LeBron has to say: “I got slimed.” The Thunder have a 1-0 lead in their NBA Finals series with Miami, and an assist has to be awarded to the ghosts at the Skirvin Hilton Hotel, where the Heat are staying. The hotel is supposed to be haunted, according to many who have stayed there, including ESPN’s Bill Simmons. He says he had a ghostly encounter in 2011:

“When we were checking in, I jokingly asked the clerk to put me on one of the haunted floors. She claimed that she did. We laughed and that was the end of it. That night, I was so tired that the ghost stories never entered my mind. I got ready for bed, called my wife, watched 10 minutes of “SportsCenter” and fell asleep. So you know: I am a heavy sleeper. Once I’m out, I’m out.

That’s what made it so strange when I woke up at 4:30 with my heart pounding. I swear on Tom Brady’s ACLs that the following happened: At first, I heard a baby crying and realized that was why I woke up. I thought it was one of my own kids before remembering that my kids weren’t babies anymore, then remembering that I was in Oklahoma City and not Los Angeles. Suddenly, it dawned on me that I wasn’t alone.”

See his column to find out what happened next.

As legend has it, in the 1930s a mother jumped to her death from one of the top floors of the hotel with a baby in her arms. There is no newspaper account of this actually happening, but Heat forward Udonis Haslem will give the ghosts their space anyway.

“I’m a pretty good guy, man. I respect everybody’s space,” he said. “If that’s the ghost’s room and they come pop up on me like that and he says it’s his spot, he can have it. There’s plenty other rooms.

“I don’t want to be in a room where somebody died or was locked up for 10 years or whatever the story’s supposed to be. I don’t want that room.”

The New York Knicks have had encounters. Boston Celtics forward Brandon Bass insisted on having a nightlight when he stayed there, and the Chicago Bulls’ Taj Gibson said that his bathroom door mysteriously slammed shut in the middle of the night.

More Skirvin Crying Baby stories here.

Have you seen the hotel’s rates? You’d cry too.

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ABOUT LAST NIGHT

What you missed while reenacting a scene from “Raising Arizona” …

• Why is everyone so surprised that Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada is calling for an investigation of the Pacquiao-Bradley decision? Pacquiao did help him get re-elected, after all.

• Everybody was kung-fu fighting …

• Michael Jordan kept Isiah Thomas off the 1992 Olympic Dream Team, claims documentary.

Meanwhile, at Euro 2012 …