Miami ? Their arena was dark and quiet Tuesday, matching the collective mood of the Miami Heat.

Players still stinging from a Game 7 loss in the Eastern Conference finals congregated for the last time in the locker room, listened to team president Pat Riley talk about excellence always needing time to build, then limped in their different directions to begin an offseason no one was ready for.

“I haven’t been to sleep yet,” Heat guard Damon Jones said, 18 hours after the season ended with an 88-82 home loss to Detroit. “It’s tough to end this way.”

It was a sleepless night for many Heat players, who considered themselves the odds-on favorite to win the NBA title.

The dream unraveled in a haze of injuries. Shaquille O’Neal injured his thigh on April 10 to start the team’s worst run of health problems all season. By the end, all five starters were hurting; O’Neal’s standout teammate, Dwyane Wade, needed two painkilling injections just to play Game 7 against the Pistons.

Wade said he’ll need seven weeks to recover from the strained right rib muscle in Game 5 of the conference finals.

Heat coach Stan Van Gundy said every team that ascended to the NBA title in the last quarter-century took lumps along the way, but grew as a franchise by keeping its most integral players together as a unit.

“You have to learn from last night and grow from it and make this, even out of the disappointment, make you stronger and better and make it a step toward the next thing,” Van Gundy said. “It just hasn’t been done where you put a core together and you win it in the first year.”