Pat Riley is in a tough spot right now as the President of the Miami Heat organization. It’s not a good look if your franchise centerpiece demands a trade after you publicly declared that you’re not willing to trade him. Jimmy Butler’s trade request has not only destabilized the Heat’s 2024-25 campaign but has also shrouded the franchise’s future in uncertainty.
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However, Riley appeared pretty relaxed and composed during his rare public appearance for the Dan LeBatard Show. During the conversation on the podcast, the 79-year-old revisited his pre-Miami Heat days, almost as sort of an escape from the current predicament he is facing. Around the half-hour mark of the show, Riley’s stint with the New York Knicks came up inevitably.
The legendary coach had nothing but admiration for the Knicks roster he led to battle. “Just give me those guys. Give me that team. Give me those players. It was Patrick [Ewing] at the time, and it was Oak [Charles Oakley], it was Anthony Mason, John Starks, Derek Harper, Mark Jackson…,” Riley recalled fondly.
It was pretty evident that he missed that old-school selfless commitment to the game of those guys. That’s why he seemed glad that he went to war with them.
Even though Riley claimed he was not taking any digs at others, he was certainly comparing the Knicks with modern NBA players when he said, “They were real men…they were real and raw…I loved coaching those guys because it was hand-to-hand combat every night. They loved the defensive end of the court.”
The Heat President really regretted not winning a Championship with such a great team. “I loved all of them and I wish we could have won a Championship together against Houston in ’94, but we didn’t,” he added.
Riley loved the Knicks because they were the raw prototype of the brand of Heat Culture he has always upheld in Miami. That’s why he wanted that team to be validated with the 1994 Championship in an NBA power vacuum created by the departure of Michael Jordan. But Riley’s luck with the Lakers was not to be replicated with the Knicks.
The Hakeem Olajuwon-led Rockets would get the best of New York in Game 7 of the 1994 NBA Finals.
Maybe the loss for the Knicks was a good thing for the NBA in a way. The brand of basketball Riley’s team presented wasn’t very attractive.
Pat Riley received pushback on his hard style of play
A part of what Riley meant by ‘real men’ was what he described as ‘bare-knuckle fist’ fight every night on the court. He even remembered one such game that is still his favorite.
“One of the favorite games ever that I coached in with the Knicks was 64-57…Barkley was there in Philadelphia,” Riley said.
Dan LeBatard, however, pushed back on this, claiming that kind of ‘hard basketball’ was killing the NBA at the time. Riley even admitted that then NBA commissioner David Stern called him weekly because the games were so bad to watch. But he still celebrated those games as the right way to play basketball.
This conversation could be indicative of a larger issue here. Riley’s fixation on basketball purism and the hard style of play might be the reason Miami Heat hasn’t won any chips since LeBron James left the organization in 2014. It has also driven away every major superstar Miami has had out of South Beach.
Pat Riley might have to adopt more modern measures as he stands at a crossroads of his Miami stint.
