The network camera was drawn to Pat Riley after Jimmy Butler’s 22-foot jumper landed like a kick to the Milwaukee Bucks’ collegiate groin late in Game 4 of the first-round series in Miami. As Butler, who’s quickly completing his 56-point masterpiece, hopped in spirited style, Riley, the gray-haired Buddha, sat with his arms folded across his jacket and tie, smiling without ceremony, blinking but not moving.
No wonder really. At this point in his long basketball career, what hasn’t Riley already seen that would cause him to concede his calculated, unmistakable veneer of control?
The clip, which has been circulating online, was another great scene to add to Riley’s collection. From the 1966 national championship game in which a black-dominated Texas West team defeated an all-white Kentucky team to his enduring role as Heat president, Riley has been associated with basketball history of tectonic magnitude.
It’s true that the ’70s version of Riley is most memorably remembered as a roleplayer who practically rides on the back of the great Jerry West as he leaves the field when the Los Angeles Lakers win the only title West has won as a player. From the ’80s on, Riley moved front and center, wrapping it up in style.
He has played, coached, or been the CEO of a team in a championship game or series for an extraordinary seven straight decades—most recently the Heat’s loss in the 2020 NBA Finals to the Lakers. If there was an award for Most Respected Character, the man who inspired Michael Douglas for Gordon Gekko’s quest for the 1987 film “Wall Street” would have to be the editorial designer.
Riley’s management as coach and CEO is arguably the most memorable of all, given the generational shifts she has weathered. West is a Lakers legend in the front office but has been a reluctant coach for three seasons. Phil Jackson has more than twice the coaching titles (11-5), but he’s only had all-star rosters and was a bust as the Knicks president. Red Auerbach deserves credit for coaching or putting together 16 of the Celtics’ 17 championship teams, but most of them were accomplished in a nascent league in which players didn’t have much freedom of movement.
Riley inherited a championship in Los Angeles but led it to Dynasty fame and four titles. He made the Knicks count again in the 1990s, yet he tortured — word for word — failing to cross the finish line in the 1994 Finals. He turned the Miami expansion franchise into a contender and three-time champion.
But we likely won’t hear much, if nothing at all, from Riley on himself, the injury-plagued Heat or the Knicks during the Eastern Conference Semifinal series. It’s no breaking news that he’s ceding the organizational microphone to Erik Spoelstra, the coach he handpicked to succeed him in 2008 and who has stayed in place after LeBron James’ four-year stay in Miami and the franchise’s final title in 2013.
Since 2012, I’ve been sampling the Heat’s locker room for a column detailing how Riley walked away from the spotlight that once couldn’t resist him. “Mostly, he stays out, he stays out when it comes to the players, and he’s been doing it for a couple of years,” said Dwyane Wade, who joined the Heat in 2003.
Riley declined a request to speak about why the once-captain is rarely heard with rare exceptions—usually to acknowledge distinguished service, as in the recent cases of Wade’s election to the Basketball Hall of Fame and the retirement of Heat veteran Udonis Haslem. The feelings toward others affiliated with the Heat were met with a familiarity: Riley didn’t want anyone but Spoelstra and his players speaking out during the playoffs.
It is better, then, to consult someone whose work does not depend on it. “He’s turned into the boss he’s always wanted, the manager he thinks you should be. Stay behind the scenes. Do your job,” said Jeff Van Gundy, one of Riley’s protégés who became his coaching nemesis after Riley’s stormy departure from New York in 1995.
Dave Checketts, who in 1991 hired Riley to coach the Knicks, recalled a phone conversation in which West, with whom Riley occasionally clashed during Showtime’s tenure with the Lakers, warned him, “You have to know how to handle the press because Pat will lose his mind when someone says something he doesn’t want.” .
“And Pat said when he came, through hours and hours of conversation, that we need to speak with one voice. That’s why I give him so much credit for what he did in Miami—he lived by what he built up. And Spoelstra was a great conversationalist, too.”
Six years ago, during my last lengthy conversation with Riley, he deviated from the agreed-upon interview topic—Magic Johnson’s brief rise to the Lakers presidency. When she commended him for refusing to play with tanks, for staying in the competition despite losing James to Cleveland and Chris Bosh due to a medical issue, Riley said:
“Players come and go, great players. When LeBron left, that was the most shocking thing to me—not to mention right or wrong—and the most shocking thing to the franchise. But our culture is the same. You have your ups and downs, but what Unchangeable is the way you do things.”
This was not necessarily the whole truth. After the Heat lost to San Antonio in the 2014 NBA Finals, Riley, no doubt in reference to James’ looming free agency, told reporters, “You’ve got to stick together if you’ve got the guts. And don’t find the first door that runs out.”
James is still out, left stage. Riley’s old tactic – challenging players’ manhood – fell on deaf ears from the new era. Most magic gets old. And Reilly, 69 at the time, now 78 is more muted, a stealth factor, more Godfather Riley than Gordon Gekko Reilly. Yet he remains very relevant, still brilliant, as he watches and waits for the auspicious occasion that merits his last resort.