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Pat Riley, at age 71, isn't thinking of stepping aside anytime soon
Pat Riley would be forgiven if he decided to step aside.
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The man has been a basketball fixture since his time with the Kentucky Wildcats from 1964 to 1967. He enjoyed a nine-year career as an NBA journeyman before latching on with the Los Angeles Lakers as a broadcaster in 1977. From there he became the team’s associate and eventual head coach, leading the squad to four NBA titles before stepping down in 1990. Riley took an entire season “off” in 1990-91 while working as an NBC color commentator before moving on to coach the New York Knicks from 1991 through 1995.
He became the coach and president of the Miami Heat in 1995, stepping down twice (in 2003 and 2008) as head coach but remaining el jefe throughout. That’s 50-odd years of non-stop hoops and, at age 71, one would think the man would be due for a break.
Riley’s considered it. Briefly. Then, as the Heat’s training camp started this week, he went right back to being Pat Riley. From Barry Jackson and Manny Navarro at the Miami Herald:
Riley, who has been with the franchise for 21 years, said Monday that he “has had thoughts the last couple years of moving on… but I woke up this morning and I was just excited…. about another season, another build, another group of young guys that have been coming in here since Aug. 1.”
Riley, 71, said “every single time I’ve always thought about [my wife] Chris and I just moving on, there’s always something else that pulls you back in…. But after 50 years of being around the NBA, I think you can leave at any time on your terms whenever you want to do it. But there’s a couple things that have to happen as far as I’m concerned.”
Riley went on to credit his deputy, general manager Andy Elisburg, calling him “the smartest man in the room” and clarifying that “without him, we wouldn’t be anywhere.”
“But,” Riley continued, “he’s not the smartest guy on the court. So, we have a ying-yang, Andy and I.”
That’s Riles, for ya!
“Anywhere,” for ‘ere, will have the 2016-17 Miami Heat struggling to replicate the style of play that left them just one game away from the Eastern Conference finals last season. The team re-signed center Hassan Whiteside to a massive four-year, $98 million deal, but the rest of the offseson was a complete and total miss.
For the interim, at least. More on that later.
The squad lost Dwyane Wade to free agency, unthinkable even with the expected staredown between Wade and Riley looming after two different variations of D-Wade giving back money to the Heat franchise in the hopes that it could be used to build better teams around the three-time champion that the squad drafted all the way back in 2003. Wade instead signed a two-year deal, with a player option for 2017-18, with the Chicago Bulls – on the surface a needless and rash move for all three factions involved.
Meanwhile, Chris Bosh has likely played his last game with the Heat, as Riley confirmed on Monday morning at the start of the team’s 2016 training camp. Bosh, who saw his 2014-15 and 2015-16 seasons end early due to complications from blood clots, failed a physical last week, and the team has until mid-February to determine just how to let the 11-time All-Star (who is still determined to play NBA ball) back into the free agent pool. Presuming, of course, another team clears him to play.
For a team that appeared to enter 2015-16 with perhaps the most fearsome starting five in the NBA – Whiteside, Bosh, the since-departed Luol Deng, Wade and Goran Dragic – this can’t help but feel and eventually act like a major step back.
Don’t think that Dragic hasn’t noticed. From the Sun-Sentinel:
“It’s not the prettiest situation right now.”
[…]
“CB is not with us, D-Wade is not with us. It’s a lot of minutes. Somebody is going to have to take those minutes.”
Dragic, who turned 30 last May, was brought in at the cost of several future first-round picks in 2015 to help push the Heat over the top. Instead, he’ll spend a year past his prime leading a Heat team full of good-yet-aging leaders (“We still got [Udonis Haslem], we got Beno [Udrih], Josh McRoberts”) and green youngsters (“Tyler [Johnson], he’s going to step in. Josh Richardson, [Justise] Winslow had and unbelievable rookie season”).
This isn’t ideal. Not for a 30-year old Dragic, and certainly not for the 71-year old Pat Riley.
Riley has made things over before, though. The 1995-96 team he inherited was an Eastern also-ran, a distant third behind younger expansion era Eastern rivals Orlando and Charlotte. He immediately cut into the fortunes of both by dealing for unhappy Hornets center Alonzo Mourning, just a week after then-Heat center Matt Geiger hacked Magic center Shaquille O’Neal, knocking him out for the first two months of the regular season.
The president/coach, along with GM Randy Pfund, went on to use that year’s trade deadline and free agent turn to shore up a team that made the Eastern Conference finals in Riley’s second year with the squad. Though that team never won a championship, Riley made out during his two trips to the lottery in 2002 and 2003, nailing Caron Butler (used to deal for Shaquille O’Neal in 2004) and Dwyane Wade before making the Eastern finals again in 2005 prior to winning it all in 2006.
The era of the Big Three followed a few years later, and entering last season it didn’t exactly seem out of the realm of the possible that Riley would convince several Heat mainstays along with Kevin Durant to take less money in order to create the next supergroup in South Beach.
Instead, he’s left with this. Is “this” such a bad thing, though?
If Bosh does indeed retire following the Heat’s move to let him go, the rest of his massive contract will be washed from the team’s books. Miami remains a destination. The 2017 free agent class features Blake Griffin, Chris Paul, Gordon Hayward and all manner of available players that would be potentially be keen to help spearhead the next Heat rebirth under Pat Riley.
There’s also Dwyane Wade, just sitting there with that player option after a year spent with Rajon Rondo as his point guard. Don’t think that Udonis Haslem, um, hasn’t noticed. Lot of noticin’ goin’ on in Miami.
From Manny Navarro at the Miami Herald:
So is there a realistic chance Haslem and Wade could be reunited?
“I’m going to damn sure try,” Haslem told me. “I mean, I don’t know. I guess I’ve got to wait until next summer to see how that goes. But, I never give up without a fight. So there’s ain’t no time to start now.”
Would Haslem consider leaving the Heat to do so?
“I didn’t say that,” Haslem said. “I was thinking more him of him coming here. I never said that. I won’t ever say that. When I said play with him again, I never said leave.
“He’s trying to sell his house down here. I might just buy it and hold it for him.”
That’s what Pat Riley was looking at. He was the guy looking at Magic Johnson and James Worthy’s aging knees in 1989, at Patrick Ewing’s aging knees in 1995, thinking about the 1996 offseason in 1994 and plotting for the 2010 offseason back in 2006. Yes, it’s fun to work amongst the players “that have been coming in here since Aug. 1,” the ones keeping him young, but the greater challenge awaits.
And Pat Riley loves that. It’s what keeps him coming back.
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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!
