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Pat Riley laments the 'contemporary attitude' of stars like LeBron James using free agency

Pat Riley laments the 'contemporary attitude' of stars like LeBron James using free agency

Pat Riley is not venting in comic sans. He’s not guaranteeing a championship for his team or lobbing insults at his former player, and the Miami Heat president will not be turned into the sort of punchline Cleveland Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert became upon Gilbert’s infamous 2010 rant against LeBron James.

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Gilbert has since apologized to James, but because Riley’s letter of regret is far more tactful, three-time Heat championship architect probably won’t have to eventually meet with LeBron sometime down the road with hat in hand.

Still, Pat Riley’s remarks about James’ decision to leave Miami and return to Cleveland aren’t painting him in the prettiest light. It’s not quite the pettiest light, but it’s not far off.

From a long interview with Ethan Skolnick at Bleacher Report:

"So maybe I'm dealing with a contemporary attitude today of, 'Well, I got four years here, and I think I'll go up there for whatever reason I went.' You know, the whole 'home' thing, I understand that. But what he had here, and what he had developed here, and what he could have developed over the next five or six years here, with the same team, could have been historic. And usually teams from inside…"

Pause.

"It would be like Magic and Kareem and [James] Worthy, they weren't going to go anywhere," Riley said. "They had come at a time when there were free agents. They weren't going to go. You think Magic was going to leave Kareem? You think Kareem was going to leave Magic? You think Worthy was going to leave either one of those guys, or [Byron] Scott or [Michael] Cooper? No, they knew they had a chance to win every year. And this team had a chance every year. So that was shocking to me that it happened. Now, could we have done more? Could they have done more?"

Riley then went on to come close to blaming current Heat players for letting LeBron get away:

"That was almost shocking to me that the players would allow that to happen. And I'm not just saying LeBron. I mean, the players, themselves, would allow them to get to a state where a guy would want to go home or whatever it is.”

You do know that Dwyane Wade has an internet connection, right Pat?

Riley’s complaint that “generational teams stay together” is a bit off, considering that each of his team’s NBA titles have come because one superstar decided that he wasn’t comfortable with his surroundings prior to moving toward the Miami Heat.

Shaquille O’Neal wasn’t the best player on Miami’s 2006 title-winner, but because he and Kobe Bryant forced a breakup of their generational crew in Los Angeles in 2004, Dwyane Wade was gifted with the low-post force he needed to push the Heat over the top. LeBron James, you’ll recall, left a roster that would go on to win 19 games without him in order to join forces with Wade and Chris Bosh in Miami in 2010. Well before that, Alonzo Mourning used the threat of his impending free agency to force a trade from Charlotte (and his generational partners in Larry Johnson and Kendall Gill) to Miami.

No, Magic Johnson never left Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (who forced his own trade to Los Angeles in 1975) when he was a free agent, but he also was never much of a free agent due to that 25-year, $25 million contract he signed in 1981. Magic became a Laker because of a conditional draft pick New Orleans owed Los Angeles due to Gail Goodrich’s free agent defection away from his generational teammates on the Lakers.

Then there’s this bit of trivia, from Magic Johnson’s 1983 autobiography (via the late, great Painted Area):

My original plan was to finish my career in the Midwest, in either Detroit or Chicago. But after my rookie season I had a new plan.

You’ll recall that Magic won a championship during his rookie year, which influenced him to move toward becoming a Laker for life. Magic was gifted but also quite lucky (as Larry Bird was in winning his first title just one year later) to join a championship contender right out of the gate. Had those two players not joined such great teams, it is very much a possibility that they would have eventually taken advantage of either trades or free agency as so many other greats of their era (Kareem, Moses Malone, Julius Erving, George Gervin, Robert Parish, Charles Barkley, the list goes on …) decided to do.

Pat Riley, it should be noted, is also the guy that decided that his 1995 New York Knicks were too old and injury-prone (sound familiar?), before eventually quitting the team to join up with the Miami Heat. His resignation announcement, given by fax, was just as tactless and regrettable as both James’ Decision and Gilbert’s comic sans creation.

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LeBron James, in 2010, decided to leave a Cleveland Cavaliers club that had been poorly constructed – making the completely correct basketball move along the way. In 2014, he left a Miami Heat club that had solid enough playoff potential without him to re-join a Cavaliers team that had lucked its way into three recent top overall picks. This version of the Cavs doesn’t boast a championship guarantee, but they are significantly younger and healthier than the Heat were and (sadly) currently are.

LeBron James, again, made the right basketball move. A re-designed Heat team with a healthy Wade, Bosh, Josh McRoberts, Hassan Whiteside and possibly Goran Dragic alongside LeBron James would no doubt contend for a championship this season and next, but there are no guarantees with Wade (at age 33, with a decade’s worth of knee trouble on his resume) and Bosh’s health. Cavaliers Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love may not be better players than Wade and Bosh at full strength, but they’re not far off, and they’re both years away from their prime.

The Cleveland Cavaliers, already, are a devastatingly-good basketball team. The squad’s new general manager has done fantastic work to make up for the four wasted years of the prior administration, and there is no reason to think that the Cavaliers won’t have as good a shot as anyone in the East at matching the Heat’s impressive four consecutive trips to the NBA Finals. The team’s core is so strong that, with the salary cap rising over the next few years, the Cavaliers could find ways to surround James with the sort of long rotation talent that a capped-out taxpayer like Pat Riley never could in Miami from 2010 to 2014.

The switch in salary cap rule might be a little unfair to Riley, but he’s also the guy that has used the rules to his advantages for decades in securing high end talent for his various teams. He’ll just have to go cry into the nine championship rings he’s earned as a player, assistant coach, head coach and executive.

Riley is allowed to moan all he wants about losing LeBron James, and the Heat’s frustratingly injury-plagued season that has followed. He’s not allowed to have it both ways, however, in chiding James and others for doing the same thing that superstars have done for years.

And the same thing that helped put Riley’s Heat in June four years in a row.

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Kelly Dwyer

is an editor for Ball Don't Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at KDonhoops@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!