The Heat are what they are thanks, in large part, to Pat Riley. The coach arrived in Florida in 1995 giving up the last year of the largest contract that a coach had ever signed in the NBA, on the Knicks. He couldn’t take Jeff Van Gundy, who stayed in the Big Apple sniffing out the great opportunity of the cheapskate he became. In return he offered Stan, his brother, who linked his path to Riley’s. And from there, the godfather of the best League in the world began his last great adventure, became the owner of a young franchise (born in the 1989 expansion), turned it into a relatively large market with a small social base, with a disinterested public even in the playoffs but great agents willing to reach the comfortable beaches of Miami. And the Heat played Conference finals (in 1997 and 2005), they won the NBA Finals (2006), had disastrous seasons (15-67 in 2008) and a new glorious stage, already with Riley as manager and with Erik Spoelstra as worthy heir.
Riley did not train from 2003 to 2005, years that he was in charge of developing a great interventionism but from the position of manager. Stan Van Gundy’s stage did not go well and Riley returned to conquer a new ring before making an eternally postponed retirement from the bench effective, in 2008, after adding the worst record of his career. Spoelstra emerged then and, with LeBron James on the team, the Heat added four consecutive Finals (2012-14) and two rings. The last ones that Riley has won, which he has added, as a player, coach and manager, a total of 9 championships. And he has played a huge number of Finals: the last one, in the Orlando bubble, in 2020. This year, the Heat have brushed that round, but have lost to the Celtics in the Conference finals. A missed triple by Jimmy Butler prevented the blow. And a new fight for the title with the Heat in between.
Riley has always been a brilliant, illustrious mind. One of the most captivating and brilliant characters in NBA history. He won as a player in 1972, and was the maker of the Showtimebeing second assistant in the first and main in the four subsequent. His relationship with Magic Johnson and with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was always prone to genius and the coach left after falling in the 1989 Finals, when Jabbar’s reassuring shadow announced his retirement and the relationship was too long as to always go well. Riley changed the extraordinary and colorful basketball of the Western Conference Lakers to understand that the game of the 90 was not heir to Showtimeand yes of the Bad Boys of Detroit. And he entrenched himself behind, first in the Knicks and then in Florida, to, with really embarrassing techniques that always bordered on legality, to touch the ring again without luck.
At 77 years old, Riley has been committed to the NBA for more than half a century and a quarter of it linked to the Heat, which he has put on the map. The ring of 2006, when he managed to perfection one of the greatest agglomerations of egos in memory, is for posterity. And the boss has responded to journalists after the elimination of the Heat to ensure that no, he is not retiring. “I’m 77 years old and I can do more push-ups than you“, Riley has said very clearly. In addition, he has talked about Kyle Lowry and his theoretical overweight. And he has said that if Tyler Herro wants to be a starter, he will have to earn it by working hard this summer. In short, that being who He contemplates everything from the stands next to Alonzo Mourning as if he were a deity, with an undaunted face and oblivious to everything that happens, he is in very good shape. This is Pat Riley, the godfather of the NBA. an eternal being.
