PAT RILEY DOESN'T HAVE TO WIN A 10TH TITLE — HE HAS PROVED HIS POINT, AGAIN
FIfty-one years since his first ring, the NBA legend has extended his peak as a leader and Finalist longer than anyone else in his sport — and any sport — with an old-school culture that still thrives
It’s too easy to call him a mob godfather. Nothing is evil about the Miami Heat organization, as even Colorado folks would agree, and besides, Pat Riley perfected the Michael Corleone look so long ago that Michael Douglas borrowed it as inspiration for his Gordon Gekko character. “Wall Street” was released in 1987, so distant that co-star Charlie Sheen was an admired movie idol then.
What’s astonishing is that nothing much has changed in those 35-plus years. Riley’s hair is still combed back, in waves of silver, as it will be at his funeral. Not that his demise is expected anytime soon, as no figure of his advanced years — he’s 78 — is more alive and influential in sports today. His presence continues to loom over these June proceedings as it has during the NBA Finals in every decade since the 1970s. Red Auerbach and Phil Jackson are long gone. Gregg Popovich has been saved only by the ping-pong balls that brought Victor Wembanyama from Paris. The Golden State Warriors look finished as a dynasty after their architect, Bob Myers, bowed out from burnout. Even LeBron James, the centerpiece of Riley’s superteam project years ago, is dropping retirement hints and attending a European auto race this weekend.
Surviving all of them is Riley, projecting the image of a basketball maharishi as he sits in the stands, saying little as he studies his latest creation. On his left hand is a single championship ring, a reminder of the nine he has won as a player, an assistant coach, a head coach and an executive. If he somehow wins a 10th in his NINETEENTH Finals — with a pesky team that shuns the disruptive vices of a superstar-empowered league, redefines overachievement with several undrafted free agents and symbolizes the work ethic, toughness and intellect that define Riley’s core values — his massive legacy then will be complete.
Without equivocation, we will say his peak impact as a champion and leader has stretched longer than anyone else’s — in his sport or any other. Think about it. Pat Riley started winning titles in 1972, before the word “bling” was invented and only two years after his hand-chosen power heir, Erik Spoelstra, was born. He won five times on the bench of the Los Angeles Lakers, four as their head coach in the “Showtime era,” and another in Miami in 2006 before moving atop the front office and watching James join Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh for two more titles. As the sport changed and distanced itself from Riley’s disciplinary methods — load management, trade demands and player entitlement aren’t in his vocabulary — he simply could have sailed off into Biscayne Bay and called it a career. Thank goodness he didn’t. The 2020s dearly need him.
He is much too hungry and focused to leave the team presidency before he’s ready, his competitive inferno stoked when his team reached the Finals in the Orlando Bubble three years ago. Turns out there was more enlightenment for Riley to share with an all-ears world, even if he won’t talk about it en masse. True to form, with the Heat looking to even a series against the more talented Denver Nuggets, he isn’t available to the international media. He generally lets Spoelstra speak for the team cause, along with the Riley-picked star who leads in his spirit, Jimmy Butler. In a recent conference call, Riley addressed what is commonly identified as Heat Culture, which fortunately has trumped Ja Morant Culture, Kyrie Irving Culture, Superstar Collecting Culture and every other destructive NBA wave.
“Culture is defined as an environment where people understand they have to share in a vision — shared goals, shared thoughts,” he said. “It’s not always easy. But you have to have an environment which you create in some way, shape or form where everyone can flourish.”
Heat Culture actually was born in 1971. That’s when Bill Sharman, coach of the Lakers, told a slow, minimally talented player how he could make the team. “He said I had to be the best-conditioned athlete in training camp. I brought that right to my coaching philosophy,” Riley said. “That’s what we have here. It’s the hardest-working, best-conditioned, most-professional, unselfish, toughest, nastiest team in the league. I believe in that to the core.”
Spoelstra, who started as the Heat’s video-room coordinator, has absorbed Riley’s lessons and become, by extension, the sport’s premier coach while outlasting others who’ve been fired after recent titles or near-titles. All you need to know about the respect he commands is how everyone calls him “Spo.” Only Popovich, known as “Pop” after five titles, gets the one-syllable-nickname treatment. Of Heat Culture, Spo likes to say, “It’s getting guys to get into roles, buy into something that’s bigger than themselves — that’s the most important thing when you’re trying to build a team that can contend for a championship. It’s elusive. It’s tough. … You try to get guys who really care about winning more than anything, even if they have to sacrifice, understanding that that’s a prerequisite, that you have to sacrifice. It’s something we believe in. It’s for us. It’s not for everybody.”
Why isn’t it for everybody? Riley wonders. He loves the “Culture” motto, right down to the team-marketed t-shirts he wears during his 50-mile walks. Fifty-mile walks? He’s in better shape than some of the Heat’s postseason victims.
“If you want to get the most out of your career, then we can help you do that. If you don’t really care about getting the most out of your career, then you can go anywhere you want,” Riley said. “The culture is something that is big for us. It’s just there. It’s embedded. We don’t have to really sell it. I think it sells itself. I want to thank all the media for talking about it all the time. But it’s real. To some people, it doesn’t matter. But for us, it counts. It’s an organizational thing. We get identified with it. And I’m proud we get identified with it.”
The personification of Heat Culture is Butler, who has found religion in Miami after struggling to understand dysfunctional situations in Chicago, Minnesota and Philadelphia that were more about drama than winning. He has had spats with Spoelstra, but they always refocus on the prize. It was Riley, remember, who once shouted down James and Wade in front of the team when they weren’t happy with Spoelstra, telling them, “You don’t ever come in my office and tell me to fire a coach. Your job is to play basketball. That’s culture!”
Butler gets it. Imagine if he wins a championship, placing him only one behind James in Heat lore — despite having considerably less talent around him. Even after they were bludgeoned by Nikola Jokic and Jamal Murray in Game 3, the Heat still have the Nuggets’ full attention, with Jokic comparing the series to a chess game. “They are one move, we are another move,” Jokic said Thursday, a day after shredding the Heat with the first 30-point, 20-rebound, 10-assist game in Finals history. “I think this is the time where the players show what they’ve got.”
You don’t think he has Riley on his mind, too?
“Everything they do here is about winning. It’s not about anything else. So we ride with that. We think about that,” Butler said. “The best part about this squad is that we’re in it for right now, every single day. That’s what the Heat Culture is about. Everybody that walks through this door … you have to buy into everything we’re about here, which is about one another, not about you, and about winning. If you can do that, you can handle all of that, you’re going to flourish here.”
It’s no surprise the Bulls, Timberwolves and 76ers couldn’t take advantage of such an inspiring postseason performer. They don’t have Riley on high. “That’s the Godfather, man, that’s the OG,” Butler said. “A huge reason why I’m here, obviously.”
He’s also a big reason why the sport of basketball, flawed and self-centered for so long, has found its way again. The Heat don’t have to win the title. Pat Riley has made his point. Again.
Where can I get a “Culture” t-shirt?
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.