The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz - South Beach Sessions - Pat Riley

Episode Date: January 9, 2025

There is no 'Heat Culture' without Pat Riley. Dan Le Batard and the legendary, nine-time NBA championship winning player, coach, and executive, leave nothing off limits in looking at a life, career, and unrelenting mentality that has shaped a league and culture for generations. Dan and Pat go through the successes, criticisms, and blow ups - including their 30 year relationship - to unearth what it was really like forging one of the NBA’s greatest legacies. Pat illuminates his journey crafting Heat Culture - what it was really like at the start of it all, what the team means to him today, and digging into his controlling and deeply emotional relationship with the game. From reminiscing about early days, to where things stand in today's NBA, Dan and Pat hold a brutally honest mirror to one of the most iconic and influential careers in all of sports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to South Beach Sessions. I'm super excited about this one for a number of different reasons. First of all, legend of legend has come across the street, finally. It took you many, many years of negotiations. You've walked across the street and the Godfather comes over to studios. He helped build, okay, me and my dad built a business near his business and he trusted me with his story and he was always there to help me in a number of different times over the last 30 years for reasons I don't totally understand perhaps he'll explain them to me but he built dynastic basketball radioactive things in three different cities the biggest cities Los Angeles New York and Miami and then he comes down here and he

makes Miami matter he is basically top Don Shula as the greatest sports coaching leadership icon we've ever had in this city and for 25 years you're the only reason that Miami basketball has been what it is in our city representing excellence in our city. So thank you Pat Riley for making the time and thank you throughout my career for helping me any number of times and ways and I will say in another way whenever I had some major life decisions to make around life and death stuff I got the wisdom of songs music poetry inspiration history pat Riley has been a bit of a life coach in some of my more challenging motion moments pushing me into the deep end. So thank you for being here and I'm just grateful in general for 30 years of being able to work

near you. That's why you should continue to keep writing those wonderful articles that you wrote for all those years in the Miami Herald for what you just said. I appreciate that, Dan. You know, I don't take that lightly. I don't know how I accomplish that, I appreciate the fact that you think that I sort of matter in a way that makes me feel uncomfortable, you're right. I've never walked across the street, only to get Puzis, or is it Puzos, or?

The pizza over here? The pizza, yes, the pizza. You come for the pizza, but never for a journalist You would never walk across the street that military compound that you have built over there That is the symbol of excellence in the city because only basketball only excellent things come from that place Where eight seeds not enough playing games not enough you put the standard. Yeah up here What you've built over there even you're awed by it, are you not? No, I'm awed by this.

Miami Vice colors all through here, I love it. And I really do thank you for how you covered me when I first got here, all of the great writers, that's 30 years ago when I came to Miami. Not everybody was a fan, but for some reason you thought it was a good move for the Heat and Mickey Harrison to bring me here. But as far as the arena goes, you know, I go back the first day that I got, you know, I got the message from Mickey that David Stern has released me from jail, from the NBA jail, because I don't know if I was gonna

coach again. Really he was so upset about me leaving New York and how it happened, but you know that being over with, I remember it started on September 30th, you know, 1995, and I remember the first thing I said take me to the practice facility and I remember going out to the Palmetto Express Ray and there was there was this gym out there and it was actually some kind of a I don't know YMCA or something. It was adjacent to a hospital. Yes it was. But wait a minute so you're coming from Mecca New York York, the height of basketball, showtime, and we put your first Miami Heat practices in like a hospital adjacent, very small,

high school type gym, say welcome to the big time. Thank you. You're in Miami, Pat Riley, and you've arrived in a place, it's laughably bad conditions, correct? Well, it was funny because on my drive out there, I said, damn, this is like 45 minutes from the Miami arena and so when I walked in I went into the locker room was a bunch of metal lockers with a bunch of old guys sitting in there and it was their place where they would work out and uh and the players you know Billy

Owens at that time and you know Kevin Willis you know and Matt all of them you know they were that's where they came to practice. It was a darkened gym. It was, it wasn't much fun. And so I said there had, there had to be some changes. But there are two men that met me there that day, and it was Keith Askins and Bimbo Coles. And I was not in my coaching gear. You know, I walked into what was the coach's office, and it had no more than four metal desks in each corner with no windows. And that's where the coaches were gonna meet,

and there was a court. And we had one room for Ron Culp and Jay Sable, and that was where they taped the players, and that was it. It sounds like the Stone Ages, Pat. It was. I mean, you're not just- But also, it was a working place.

No, but it's ridiculous. For all the things that you've been over the years, sorry to interrupt you, but you are more Schenectady than you are Hollywood. And you put on the Armani suits and you developed a leadership style that has been copied by many and you've won everywhere it is that you've been. But when you got to Miami, you had already conquered in Los Angeles you've gotten very close to New York what you were arriving at was very small time under who it is you were supposed to be and because essentially the heat sort of

tampered to get you or however the messiness was that made David Stern say you can't do that you can't go from New York to Miami Mickey Harrison can't do that right right it was probably similar to the first place that you had as a television studio when I had to go out to some warehouse you know yeah those humble those humble times but Keith Askins and Bimbo Coles they were standing there and after I walked around and I said a lot both of them, Keith asked and said to me, he said, could you work us out? And I said, they had a ball, I said, well, I don't have my shoes on or anything and he

said, no, just put us through an hour workout. I put them through an hour workout and up and down all the defensive sliding drills, you know, driving line, post line, suicide, shooting drills. Never did they stop sweating or running for one hour. And I was like drenched, you know. And so I said, I like this. I like them. And I like the fact that they would respond to me and ask me that question. But yes, I came from royalty in Los Angeles. I mean, the best of the best that helped pull me along in my career. New York was an exciting, exhilarating, fun place.

MSG is just a great place to play basketball. But when I came to Miami, we had to change things. Practice facility, Ron Culp, Jay Sabel changed that in a year by getting a place at LaSalle. And then I remember... Still a high school, by the way. Nicer, nicer, but for people to understand what part of Miami you were going for and through. You come from something that is beneath you because it's a hospital gym. Then you improve to something better that is still a high school

on the water but still not madison square garden not the forum and you're building it into the empire would become i don't think people understand that just because perhaps they take you for granted the degree of difficulty was on what you've made this franchise for twenty five years importing everything you learned in Los Angeles and New York to make this a city that mattered

in basketball for a quarter century. Well, it had to be first class. You know, it has to be for the players and also for the fans. Mickey was wide open to changes. He had a side job at the time. He was building the largest cruise line in the industry and so he said to me, do what you have to do. Started with

the practice facility, then it started with the office space for basketball operations. They moved to SunTrust and we had our own little place at LaSalle and then it started with the new plane. We had what they called Jalopy 1 and Jalopy 2 back. They were prop DC-9s, I think, at the time. And Mickey agreed to getting us. Probably the most important item that we got was a new plane, a 727, with the red ball and the Heat logo on the back.

And it was parked at signature. You know, and every time opposing teams would come in, they would see this plane. I heard that players used to run out of their plane and run up the stairs. We used to leave the stairs open and they'd run up the stairs and they'd take a look at it. Oh my, oh my, it's pretty nice. And so, as a matter of fact, one of the greatest players of all time that we have here said that, that really said I'm gonna go to Miami one day you know and so and yes I think you have to build the place that that your players are proud of that the

staff is proud of and you know and that does really I think multiply exponentially and into getting done what you have to get done but but Miami embraced me and they embraced me even more I think with the immediacy of the headline in the Miami Herald that said One month after we got here morning glory, you know And I'll never forget how I felt then driving down to the Miami Arena Knowing there was a press conference for Alonzo morning. We traded for him and and knowing there was a press conference for Alonzo Mourning. We traded for him and then I was ecstatic

and I said, this is the start, this is the start. And that team got off to an 11 and three start and probably the most embarrassing headline that I was involved with is Sports Illustrated. It said, who's hot, who's not. And it had a picture of me on one side and Don Shula on the other side and I called coach Shula and I said I'm embarrassed by it I apologize for it that's you know because the Dolphins weren't doing that

well at the time and if I may if I may just offering the context to this story I can't believe you still feel this badly about this all these years later but you're respecting the legacy of Don Shula you come to his town and after an 11-3 start sports illustrated puts on the cover Don Shula is not hot. Here's the hot new thing in town and on behalf of sports illustrated You don't have anything to do with how that happened But you were so embarrassed that it sticks with you 30 years later Because you know how hard it is to build excellent things in a city

and you need to respect them. Well I respect the Don Shula and who he was, what he accomplished, especially as a coach. I mean I read pretty much everything about him. I actually think maybe at one time my brother might have played with him. My brother played you know nine years in the NFL, AFL you know back in the day but but he was a special coach and a special person in the city and so I never wanted that at all but I hope that one day I could maybe reach the level of a Don Schuel in this area and you know 30 years later maybe the both of us are there and so but that

that wasn't the goal never was the goal but but I wanted to get off to a good start and then we did and then BAM adversity hits you know from that standpoint and and I think you learn so much about trying to build something from the ground floor up they really do. The things you have learned the 79 year old Pat Riley looks at the 39 year old Pat learned, the 79 year old Pat Riley looks at the 39 year old Pat Riley and the 59 year old Pat Riley and tells him what from over here. In the beginning I would I would tell all of those 39 year olds and 59 year olds that stop taking so much you know from the game because all I ever took was their

effort. I took their heart. I took a lot of times their mind. I took everything that I could in the name of winning for them, for me, because I thought it would be in the best interest of everybody if it was that hard. And so today- Merciless, merciless, aggressive. Well, it wasn't absolutely merciless. We had a lot of fun. You know, we had a lot of stories.

Are you, what you're looking back on, you were very hard on those players and men, demanding more, demanding better at every turn. Well, everybody, almost in the league who were coaching at the time, you know, that was sort of the mentality. Did I take it to another level? Yes, and it is born out of a personal experience and so to get to the end of what I want to talk about is that yesterday I've changed, you know, from that standpoint because this

generation simply would not tolerate that,, you know, I remember how I started and when I started as a player, as a journeyman player for nine years in the league, I was not a great player. I was drafted number seven in the NBA by the San Diego Rockets. But when I got to Los Angeles, you know, I remember Bill Sharman gave me the message of a lifetime when he told me, he said, I like you as a player. I didn't have a contract. You're coming to training camp and you have to be the best conditioned player.

You have to win the mile run. You gotta win all of our suicide sprints. You've gotta win this, that, everything. You gotta be first in everything. And if you do that, I think there could be a place on the roster. So I'm saying to myself, all I have to do is be in great shape to have a job with the Lakers and West and Baylor and Chamberlain in that group. And so obviously that summer I went and did

a job like nobody else ever did a job with the help of Bill Berka, who was the assistant coach at the time, and I came to training camp, and then Fred Schaus, who was the general manager, he says to me, okay, your job, you'll make the team, but your job is to keep West, and to keep Goodrich, and to keep McMillan, and shape every practice. That's your job.

So you're coaching already. You're already coming up through the system as a coach. Your job is to make sure that everybody is the fittest, healthiest, best physical version of themselves. And it started with me. And so, you know, Jerry at 40 minutes a night and Gale at 38 minutes a night, and Jimmy McMillan was a 21-year-old rookie, and he was about 230. So I'd come in every day and Bill said take Jerry today and I'd take Jerry and some days he would be tired and I'd have my way with him and the next day he'd come in he said okay, okay if this is your job then I'm gonna kick your ass. Then he would like throw me in through the whole practice. He said I really needed that, thank you. throw me in through the whole practice. He said, I really needed that. Thank you.

And so, you know, the silver lining to that, Dan, was the fact that I was challenged just to get in shape to make the team. And I was challenged to play against three of the greatest players, you know, in the game at that time, that it made me better. I became a better player by doing that and not deferring to them. And then I started to get into the rotation and then one day there was a headline in the LA Times that said, you know, the Magnificent Seven and they had the faces of all seven players on this 33 in a row game winning streak championship 71-72 Lakers and I was one of them and and I always go back and I think about that and that's what brought me to this day here is that that's where conditioning was for me it's the most important thing that a coach can do for his players

because they can't do it on their own. Today there's so many more other things, mental health and all of these other things that we can help players with but it's our job to get them in world-class shape and if they're in world-class shape I think you're going to get the best performances out of them. But looking back at the 39 and 59 year old Riley, this Riley the only inch that he's budging is well I'd still work best performances out of them but looking back at the thirty nine and fifty nine-year-old riley this riley the only the inch that he's budging is well i'd still work on like that but today's generation won't have it like

they won't allow me to to i mean what what you were putting what thirty nine-year-old pat riley was putting the back-to-back lakers in terms of fitness level you were changing you were you were changing the balance of the league, you were changing the way that basketball was played at the time, and you were exceedingly demanding in ways that I would imagine this Pat Riley would endorse, but also see with clarity that was an unreasonable push, thrust that you were giving a bunch of players who were already giving you their best. Yeah, and they were the best in the world anyhow, you know, so if I could get the best in the world,

Magic, Kareem, you know, Silkworthy, Nixon, Rambis, you know, McAdoo, if I could ever get the best in the world in that kind of shape, then I think they would have been even better. They were good. I remember Kareem when I when I first got the job and and It was a rather, you know Negative time, you know with the team we had just won a championship in 80 We got beat by Houston in 81 and then and then there was a coaching change And then I got pushed through the door as an interim coach And I remember going to Kareem the next morning and and I said, interim coach, and I remember going to cream the next morning. And I said, you know, Cap, and I know him.

I played against him in high school. He was at Power Memorial, you know, and we ended up beating them in a big Christmas tournament in Linton High School, it was connected in New York, and I was a teammate of his, you know, with the Lakers for a couple of years, and then I became his coach. And I wasn't John Wooden to him and so John Wooden is a special, special, special man and

and I think Kareem, you know, had that kind of mind when he came to if I'm going to be coach, I'm going to be coached by this kind of guy and I said, you know, Kareem, I want to need you. And he said to me Pat you have to worry about me I'm gonna come every single night and he gave me a great tip great lesson he said but I want you to get all these other guys who sometimes don't come who sometimes are not in shape get them ready go at them hard and I would appreciate that. Wow, he made your job very easy. Yes he did.

And you know, Cap was not one of those guys that could really listen to a lot of my stuff. I mean, he understood what I was doing. There were times I thought that he said, this isn't what it's about, but I think the results showed that we were in great shape and we could win and Go into the final seven times in nine years. I think for for him That was that was acceptable. So but he didn't need you so much to get better his excellence

You know he would he would fall right in line, but he said I Know some of these others because he had been through it for three or four years with some of those players Go coach them coach go coach them in shape get them ready I will pretty much handle anything you have to say and there were times when He looked at me like bring it on to me today You know bring it on to me because I need it because I was terrible last night And so it was a little bit like you know what Bill it on to me because I need it because I was terrible last night and so it was a little bit like, you know, what Bill Russell was to read Auerbach when in Russell's book The Second Win he wrote of his relationship

with Auerbach and Auerbach went to him and he said, you know Russ, I'm gonna have to yell at you almost every day and he said, he said, why? Why me? And he said because I got to get on Lusketov, you know, I got to get on Heinsen, you said, why, why me? And he said, because I gotta get on Lusketov. I gotta get on Heinzen, I gotta get on Cousy. Oh, so Kareem helped you coach him and helped you coach them by doing all the things that were needed. This was a very deep philosophical man.

If he comes from John Wooden, it's not just that he's coming from a philosopher poet, he's also coming from sort of a moralistic high school teacher. And then he meets Pat Riley, whose fire burns differently than John Wooden's. And you're very eager right now to prove yourself after your playing career that you can do this, that you're worthy of coaching the Lakers. So you come at him, you come at him hard and he let you in and show me coach, coach them.

Oh, he wanted to be coached. No, there's no doubt he wanted to be coached. He just wanted to make sure that the people that he played with, those players that he loved, he loved Magic, he loved the team that we had, but he just wanted to make sure that everybody was right. And so he was equal to that. And he was a supporter of mine for nine years. So when you got great ones that accept you, the really great ones, and Kareem could be considered one of the greatest ever in a lot of the comparisons. But when you got somebody for nine years who

supports you, even though he might not agree with you, and that's part of being a coach and an NBA superstar's mentality, then that's, you know, that's where the rubber hits the road. There's some conflict there all the time. I had conflict with all my players. All the players who had a certain level of greatness, there was some conflict which is good. And whether it was in LA or in New York or here even in Miami, you know, in the beginning it could have been with, you know, Zo or it could have been with Tim Hardaway, it could

have been with any of those guys. And I love that first thing. You and Zo have both told the stories of Zo being in your face, you being face to face rabid with each other and your response being some form of I don't mind if you say fuck you to me, just teach me something, teach me in the exchange if we're gonna have some conflict like that. Yeah, I think that's important that when you push players physically,

more physically than mentally, I never got into their heads that way. You know, I was a storyteller and most of them were true. I made examples, you know, of a lot of things, but most players would follow you. But if you push them physically, I can remember a couple of skirmishes with with players who would simply say don't talk to me that way don't and and they were right in trying to drive them or push them to become better at this and to become equal because everybody else was doing it. And so that was a style that that I had for my entire coaching career. I began to mellow as I got older as a coach because I knew how to relay things differently.

You have to remember I was I was starving, you know, in 1979, 80, you know, I mean, I never had these thoughts of where I am today. I was happy to be the traveling secretary and I was happy to be a color analyst with Chick Hearn, but I was starving. I wanted something. I wanted to be more than that. And when I got that opportunity, I was ready. I was already ready just because I studied the game, I knew the game, I knew X and Y. But starving because your playing career as a professional was over, right? And this was the, whatever the height of athletic greatness

was going to be was now in your rear view mirror, so now you are starving for what you're going to be in your 30s. When I say that you've been good at life advice, Pat, I will tell people here now that one of the first articles I wrote in Miami that was a national splash was about you on the Rob report. You have always been super trusting with your story

with me in ways I'd like to understand better because I've never really understood why you've always helped my career along the path But in this story you said that in the ideal evolution of what somebody will do with their life in their profession You'd ideally change careers every 10 years to keep yourself inspired and motivated and your 30s go from this to your 40s to this Totally different careers doctor lawyer, nobody can do it, it's not practical. But over the course of my career, heeding that knowledge, I have changed my career

every 10 years within the parameters of what I do here, from writer to radio to television to now a businessman trying to run a business. And along the path, many times you've given me excellent advice in those spaces and I just wanted to tell you that here and I wanted to say it publicly because I don't I don't think people understand quite how much depth you have beyond basketball because I admire you for basketball reasons they're obvious but you know a lot about living and dying and living well and and trying to live in an inspired place

And pushing yourself beyond reasonable means so that some of your life becomes either Winning or misery obsessive compulsive pushing through still doing this somehow at 79 and still showing us the way in Inspiring ways. I'm sorry if I yammer at you a little bit, but I do want over the course of this for people to understand that my admiration for you runs deeply beyond basketball. Like basketball's just the beginning of how it is that I feel about you

because you've got real life wisdom after a life well lived. Well I lied to you then in the raw report. You know if I said to you, you know every 10 years you gotta change careers, then I lied to you because I've been report you know if I said to you you know every 10 years you got to change careers then I lied to you because I've been in this thing for 57 years yeah but you've changed throughout it you have changed you have changed not everyone makes it look like this you have you within the within the serpentine you've changed careers every 15 or 20 years yeah but

you know when I became a broadcaster the year I left the Lakers and I went to NBC and I looked at myself on TV after every weekend show. I was supposed to do what you do. I could run a studio show, you know, with a headset. Next to Bob Costas. Bob Costas will lead the show and you'll be the star next to him. Eloquent and wonderful. They didn't even bring Bob in is what they did is they left me alone and all summer long with the teleprompter all they have to do is read the teleprompter they try to screw me up a couple of times by knocking the prelector on excuse me the teleprompter and saying you gotta ad lib this opening and they had a couple of beautiful women you know that they wanted to have a studio show with me and some women and

Julie Moran was one of one of them and I'm trying to think of the other this is so this is Showtime NBC Riley's broadcasting career. He's about to shoot to superstardom and broadcasting will obey and Julie Moran were the two that they casted With me and then the first time I actually went for a dry run Terry O'Neill who's the executive producer and Dick Ebersol is the one that believed in me and then the first time I actually went for a dry run, Terry O'Neill who's the executive producer and Dick Ebersol is the one that believed in me and so we have this big dry run out in Benaiz and they built a studio and all of a sudden they go 10-9-8-7 and boom here we go. This was like you know and they're sitting waiting and I just blow the opening.

You just froze. I didn't freeze, I just blew the opening. I couldn't read the teleprompter and then all of a sudden they did it again. Terry O'Neill walks out to me and he puts his hands on the desk and he said, you know, I think we ought to just call it a day today, Pat, and we'll come back here tomorrow. But I want to spend some time with you this afternoon. So two weeks later, all of a sudden, Bob Costas does show up. And I was pretty good with a good man that could run.

An excellent broadcaster. He's the best of the best. You wouldn't have to do anything. No, he would come in. And Bob was great. He would come in Sunday morning in New York, just before we'd go on the air. And he'd put his feet up on the desk,

and he'd be reading the newspaper like this. I'm over there like studying my notes. That's so funny, Pat. And Bob was so good for me, because he helped me. He set me up. And we were in Europe one time doing the McDonald's classic in summertime or just before preseason and here we go. They count down, I'm here and Bob wants me to open it up and sure enough the teleprompter

goes out for real and I just see Bob do this. And he just get out of the way and they came right in tight and he just see Bob do this, he goes, and he just get out of the way, and they came right in tight, and he just right off the top of his head did three and a half minutes, and I said I could never do that. That's so funny that you would work with the best of the best.

Keep in mind, this is one of the great television talents that there have ever been, but so you felt like a bit like a cardboard mannequin next to him, sort of faking, fake, but even though you were there to be style and grace, were you not there to be beautiful Pat Riley, coach of fashion, fashion icon? You were gleaming on television,

but you stunk at broadcasting. I wanted to be good, you know, I'm better at this, but I couldn't be that. And we had the final meeting with with Dick and Terry I was called to Dick's office once one Monday after a show and Terry O'Neill who I loved dearly is a great executive producer NFL all that stuff back in the day he's laying on the couch over there with his head back on a pillow and Dick is at his desk and I walk and I sit down next to Dick and you know Dick is fidgety, a little nervous you know and he says Pat look at you

know we really like you, you're doing a great job but you got to be harder, you got to go after them. Don't be afraid to criticize your coaches, don't be afraid to criticize players and just instinctively I said no I'm not going to be that. You know I can do some good musical pieces, I can read the teleprompter, I can do three or four minute things, but I'm not going to just brutally criticize somebody. I'm just not going to. I did have the thought that I might you know have my coach again one day and so I didn't want to do that. Plus that's not my nature and I remember Dick when I was explaining this to him, he says, Terry, could you please help me with some input here? And then Nick Job opened up and I was back into my own

Nirvana at that time. That was my comfort zone. I knew how to coach. I was very good at it. And I don't care where you sent me. I had the confidence that Just give me those guys. Give me that team. Give me those players You know, it was Patrick at the time and it was Oak and it was Anthony Mason John Starks, you know Derek Harper Mark Jackson Kiki Van Dwee I can't even imagine how hot that fire burned like I can't imagine if I don't that when I say 39 year old Pat Riley, 59 year old Pat Riley, how much pushing those are hard men. Those you were coaching a different bunch that was the Lakers. I mean I know all teams have their personalities but that that team was it felt like a

manifestation of your will, your muscle. Yeah, they were real men. I don't say that in contrast to anybody else, but they were real raw. And when we got Xavier McDaniel and Anthony Bonner, it went to another level. And so I loved coaching those guys because it was hand-to-hand combat every night they they loved the defensive end of the court. I love Patrick, I loved Oak, I loved

all of them and I wish we could have won a championship together against Houston in 94 but we didn't and so yeah the Lakers were different. Speed, talent, showtime, and just as tough mentally, they could beat you at a bare-fisted, knuckled game if you wanted to be that. It might take a day, a game or two to get used to that because everybody was trying to do that to slow us down versus the bare-knuckle, you know, fisted, you know, Knick team that came at

you every night that way and so that's who they were and that's what I coached. One of the favorite games ever that I coached in with the Knicks was 64 to 57. That was a score at Barkley. I think it was Barkley was there in Philadelphia. That's awful. We won 64-57. It was a masterpiece. No, you should be ashamed of yourself for doing that to basketball. We held these guys to 57 points.

I mean, today they throw me out of the league. No, because you were dragging the games in the quicksand. No, I wasn't. I was winning. That's what it took to win. And David didn't like it in no It was brutally ugly and you know it but weekly call from David or Russ Granik, you know, okay They started instituting different rules left and right but I couldn't stop those guys, you know the first day of training camp

My first practice to Charleston your team was too physical for the NBA. That was a blight on the league's ass. A 64 to 57 game that's making you smile right now because of how ugly it was. Yeah the first practice was we had traded for Xavier McDaniel who I loved. It's from Seattle and in Charleston he shows up the first day and I'm looking at my practice plan. I was very precise with my practice plans, the master plans for training camp and this was our first day of training camp. And so to define the message via what we're gonna do out

on the court about what kind of team we're going to be, the very first drill was going to be a defensive rebounding drill, blocking out, you know, and so we started after we warmed them up and they got a full sweat and we went live and matched up X against Anthony Mason. I knew what was coming, everybody knew what was coming. And there were both men who believed in terriatorial acquisition. And so it happened, quick. So okay, everyone knows you're throwing,

you're lobbing two grenades at each other. But you had to do it, I had to get it over with. And it happened quickly and both of them squared off and they started throwing and went from one bleacher to the one, we're chasing them down left and right trying to stop it. We finally stopped it and both of those men looked at each other, they shook hands, and they said, okay, we understand each other, right?

And that was it. And they were great teammates, you know, but. I don't think people understand the intensity of the fire, Pat. I wanna talk to you about a number of things over this because we can get nostalgic and I don't think people understand the intensity of the fire, Pat. I want to talk to you about a number of things over this because we can get nostalgic and I don't want to waterlog it in that because I want to talk about some of the deeper stuff that you would waterlog it, believe me. It wouldn't be hard for me to do because those teams were uncommonly tough and you are proud of,

because when you say you haven't changed, those are three very different things you've built over those 30 years. Coaching is different from being an executive. You have changed, you have grown over the last 30, 40 years over who you've been as an executive. You brought all of that that you learned in Los Angeles and New York, you brought it to Miami, and you're still here fighting at 79 when it would be very easy to just go to Malibu and rest.

You've earned rest. No, no. I mean Jack McMahon, you know, Bill Sharman, Pete Newell, Jerry West, Dave Checkitz, you know, all the executives that I worked with, I learned a lot from them, especially Jerry, and you know, working for him as a coach all those years in LA. And so when I came to Miami and Mickey said that he was going to hire and he hired the president and head coach of the Miami Heat. I immediately turned all the executive stuff over to, at that time it was Dave Wohl and it was Chris Wallace and then Randy Fun came in and Andy Ellsberg and I coached. I was never in the executive offices of basketball operation. I was done with the coaches and at that time it was Stan

Van Gundy, Scotty Robertson, and Bob McAdoo, and me, and Ron Culp, and Jay Sable, and 12 players. That's all we had. I kept that tight. That group was tight and I kept, you know, sort of an insulated fabric around that group and it was important to me. So the executive part of it in building the franchise, I don't care who you are as an executive, I had the power, I never used it. I didn't wanna use it.

But I had the power, basically, the players thought I had the power, basically. The players thought I had the power and I could coach. And that's the only thing that I could bring to this team is winning. I mean, I have to take it from the practice court to the old arena, which I love playing that old arena. And as long as we were winning, the executive things would take care of themselves. Now, while I was doing that too on the side I was getting tremendous support you know from the people that I delegated that stuff to at the time. I couldn't do both I was not an executive I was a coach and I've learned how to become an executive

you know better and and I've kept people together here we have kept people together here for a long time. It's a great commercial running right now and it has sort of a religious connotation to it that in talking about, you know, teams can win but families win championships. And I believe that. You have to figure out a way where you can get everybody to buy in, not just what you're doing on the court, but to really be part of something themselves, where they have a good time. They win, we party, we have fun, we sing, we do videos, we do practical jokes, but that never gets away from when we hit the court, the sweat in the bodies are colliding,

and that's the way it is. So for 30 years, I've had so many people that have helped me along the way and supported me, because my mind was exactly where you said it would be. The Heat became first. I loved that first team. You know, Tim Hardaway, Dan Majerle, Keith Askins, you know, Jamal Mashburn, you know, Alonzo Morning, PJ Brown. I love that team. I love that team. Another team that's a manifestation of

your will. Another, another. We just, we couldn't get a bouncer there, you know. I mean, that's what happened and that was one of the most painful times for me at the beginning because I wanted to turn this franchise around, you know, so quickly and we did. You turned it around but not to your standards. No, you placed the ridiculous, you expected for some reason, it's the standard you've set in Miami, it's not reasonable. The standard is the championship, is the games that you want

to be playing and so you getting to the first and second round with not being able to get Michael Jordan, pass Michael Jordan, this was great indignity to you to not be deep in the playoffs. Right, right, but there's certain levels of a success I think whether it's the first round, whether it's the second round, whether it's Eastern Conference finals or the finals. I mean, if you win it all, it is very, very hard. That's a hard trip for a whole season for any team. And so our level of success was very good based on what it was prior to our coming together here. But I wasn't satisfied because I knew we had a team that year, those years, that was a championship type team.

And so for whatever reason why we didn't get there, I took it very personal. And they became some of the darkest years for me at the end of the seasons. You know, after we had lost by a point here, a point there in the finals against New York, they were a great team too, very competitive series, always going to the ultimate game and losing. And it's not fun, you know, it just takes you to a place of darkness. And so when I talked about starvation, you know, with the Lakers, I was starving for an opportunity to do something to find another path and this was another form of

Starving to take this franchise that I'm not saying that it was inept it was not enough that just was the team that didn't get anywhere and so I felt very very bad about those endings and But if you look back on them they were they were the the things that started the fan base here in Miami. Oh but you have talked so eloquently about this over the years I remember during all of these games it's some of the

best writing that I did was you allowing me access around you to some of these feelings where you're saying game seven is the greatest way to live, what happens at the end? They're not going to hang you by the thumbs in the middle of town square. It's a higher form of living and you have let me into some of these dark places because I remember you volunteered to me and I don't know why you did this. I still don't know to this day. You volunteered the story outside the locker room you were broken you were you at the time you're still smoking cigarettes only one stressed only one

stressed and and then that mix of that was stressful all that shit was stressful it looks stressful from where i was standing and and you to volunteer the story of breaking down sobbing at your desk and alonzo morning coming in in uniform and standing over you and tell you to do your fucking job. I never understood why you volunteered that story. I don't know either. I mean the first person who saw me walk out of the locker room was Tim Donovan.

He's always standing right there by the stairwell. This is American Airlines Arena and we had just lost the first year of the arena opened and we had lost in the seventh game by a point. And it was the first time that I really couldn't talk to my players, you know, I mean, for a while, I needed to, I need a little time. And so I went into my office. I don't believe in post-game meetings with your coaches like immediately, you know, cause I got to take care of myself.

And so the other coaches went to the video room, we had desks in there and they waited. And I just, I just, I was in that office and it all just came down, you know, I don't know, it could have been, you know, everything culminating from, you know, it could have been everything culminating from when I was raised, with my father, what went on in LA,

or at the end, what went on at the end in New York, and here I am again losing, failing, and it's just, I was overwhelmed. So yeah, I cracked at that time, and I do, I cracked, you know, at that time. And I do, I forgot I lost track of time, you know? But the tears felt good, they felt great. I just let them go. And then I felt his presence of Zo, you know,

he opened the door and Zo, you know, sculpted, you know, he was in his basketball shorts and he was standing there like this. And he's going, you know, he sculpted, you know, he was in his basketball shorts and he was standing there like this and he's going, you know, never forget it. He said, coach, I know you're feeling low. He said, but you got to come back in here and you got to finish the season. And he just filled me up.

He said, I know, and I can relate to how low you are. He just filled me up. He said, I know and I can relate to how low you are. He just filled me up. I walked in and they're all in that locker room. A bunch of gladiators, you know, half-naked, some still in their uniforms and just sitting there. And I'll never forget when I walked in they straightened up in their chairs you know they just sort of straightened up for a minute for the coach and you know that made me even feel good or better you know I mean that made me feel better because they knew how hard I took it and it was my job to make sure I could give them some solace in this moment because we had been through this Like three years now everyone knew the team was gonna be broken up after that everyone knew they'd given you everything that they had

Like they lost as a one seat to an eight seat on a bounce And so it becomes a failure at the end they're broken in that locker room when you're saying it's your darkest You're going out there and you've got to summon something for them now. But that's where I think a lot of people miss you know what coaches do and what they have to do you know you know prior to games and post games is that there are those moments that are are definitely seminal moments that you'll take with you for the rest of your life you'll never forget that time but you also you know you for the rest of your life. You'll never forget that time. But you also talk about the adversity of the moment. And I've talked about this all the time.

And it's somebody else's writing that in my readings when I was younger as a coach, that in every adversity, we find and we must find the seed of equivalent benefit. There has to be an equivalent benefit to this failure to whatever it is and out of that seed you replant it, you replant it, you replant it and then it it might grow a hundred feet in a year or whatever it is. And so you know failure is just as much a part of the NBA as winning is and and probably it's more growth-oriented than just winning games all the time.

I mean, that's how you grow. You built your business on failure too, and you built your business on greatness. And I think everybody who gets to where we have gotten to, we all have to appreciate those moments when it was dark, and that it was low, and that you never felt good about anything. So I have been born out of that.

Even in the winning in LA, there were moments that were darker than Miami, because the expectation was even higher. And so here there was an expectation when I showed up and I felt like I failed, you know, those first six years. And then we had to do a two-year rebuild and then we got Karan Butler and then we got Dwayne Wade and we got Lamar Odom and we got Eudonnis Haslem walk through that door one day and we got Eudonnis Haslem and we had Eddie Jones and Brian Grant and we put together now the next iteration of what the heat was

gonna look like and then we got Shaquille he got here and we had to lose some players we loved but and then we won our championship and you have no idea the relief you know oh man you know when we won that title, the one suit, one shirt, one tie game, I call it, it was the best feeling. And we hadn't won, I hadn't won for 20 years in the championship. And so it was the best feeling for not only me, but for the city of Miami. It's almost like it was healing. And so, it was healing, you know, and so.

Oh, but this is why I say though that I have a special admiration for what it is that you've built here. By any standard, your first years here were successful by a reasonable sports standard trying to build a thing in Miami, but you had come from, I play in the finals every year i'd play i'm always in the eastern conference finals i'm always in the western

conference finals you've all you've done is one of the higher level than what you were winning in miami like anything so you're so your standard is unreasonable is a not maybe i don't look at it that way so you think you're failing for six years and you don't feel like you've succeeded until finally the one the one suit one tie game that was because you you were just going back to Dallas and You didn't plan on playing any more than one game You were up you were up three two in the final and you were saying we're going there to finish a series that people were expecting

You to lose there. Yeah, I mean that was not a motivational ploy, but that was definitely a message that I wanted to get to them. You know, just like when we were down, you know, to nothing, you know, I wrote on the board 620.06, and they all looked at it like, okay, 620.06, what is that, you know? And, you know, it definitely wasn't a biblical scripture or anything like that, but I said that date is the first date that we can be world champions. 6-2006 we're gonna be world champions, get that in your mind. And Gary Payton, I love him to death, I just saw him the other day, he showed me his 15 strong card, you know

It's it's a credit card that we know it's not a credit card, but it's a real card 15 strong 250,000 cards we used to put in there We used to believe that what we put into that pit that little silver pit every night Were more than cards. They had to put some personal in their rosary beads your mother's pictures your family Whatever it is something that some personal in there, rosary beads, your mother's pictures, your family, whatever it is, something that counted was in there. That locker room was a bit religious. There's a picture of you that with your arms extended that's a bit messiah. They got me at the right time and I was probably yelling and screaming. That was the start of the cult, the cult and

culture started around there where you're all of a sudden now your championship Riley in Miami. Well Peyton said to me, okay coach I see the date but how are we gonna do it what are you gonna do to help us get there? I mean he laid it right on me we're down 0-2 and we did not play well in Dallas and I said I said Gary if you'll just follow me we will get it done. I didn't say that with an arrogance or a hubris. It might sound like it. I said, you gotta follow me now from game to game

because we did not execute with a damn down there. We didn't do the things that we talked about doing after we beat Detroit in that glorious six game win here in Miami. And so, and for the next four games, then we just turned Dwayne loose Who at that time became the greatest player in the world during those two weeks. He was Incredible 35 a game average in 18 19 free throws a game

God bless you mark Cuban. God bless you I know he was upset with the officiating but Dwayne earned that God bless you Mark Cuban. God bless you. I know he was upset with the officiating but Dwayne earned that. God bless you Avery Johnson because you never stopped doubling Shaq. Yeah and but I'm not going to second-guess anybody. I'm just going to say to myself that you know Gary follow me. We will get this done on the back of Dwayne on the great play of Shaquille and Alonso, and then the timeliness of Udonis Haslam making key plays in the fourth quarter of game six, James Posey making a three from the corner, and James Posey who is not a

great one-on-one player getting caught with the ball with three seconds on the shot clock, had nothing to do with it. he put it on the floor and made a runner and you know and then Gary Payton making a steal or Jay Will making one jumper or Antoine Walker going full court and laying it up and giving a little shimmy on the court I remember all that stuff and and so when we finally won it in game six, it was just like an explosion of emotion. It was incredible. Everything came back from all the years. And it came back for a lot of the players too. Family New Year's is this week.

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Tell me about these emotional explosions of yours, because over the years I've sort of probed around in some therapy places. You just said that when you were crying at your desk, a catharsis of tears that went back to your childhood and your relationship with your dad, like what were the number of, I'm gonna call them failures, like they, or what are the pains you're all grieving at that moment where Pat Riley is allowing himself to feel most deeply because that's what this risks. It risks a loss that comes with that kind of pain

where you realize you have to turn over your roster and men you care about are gonna have to be gone because you've got to start over again. Right, well, you know, I think all of us, we have to be gone because you've got to start over again. Right. Well, you know, I think all of us, we have to be reflective. We have to be introspective. You have to go inside and, you know, and at those moments when it's, it's the darkest,

you know, you may go back. And so, you know, when it comes to my dad, you know, I always go back and flash back because here was a man who, 22 years of chasing his dreams in the minor leagues as a player and then as a manager and you know, he won the championship in 1947 when I was two years old in Schenectady, New York for the Schenectady Blue Jays. He had Tommy Lasorda on the team at the time. And I remember when I was three or four, I kept going to McNearney Stadium.

He would take me out there. And I remember my dad as a coach. I could be four or five years old. I remember those days. And then he got fired in 1952, and that was it. That was his career, and it was over. And he was supposed to get a job with the Philadelphia Phillies as the head coach,

and I think it went to Cookie Labogetto at the time, and he was very disappointed. And he went into a real deep, dark place when his career was over with. And so, he was very tough on his sons. Lee was a football player. Lenny was probably the best athlete of all of us. He tore up his knee early.

And I was a basketball player and a pitcher. Dennis, my older other brother, you know, was more into hot rods and stuff and cars. And you were good enough in football to be drafted as a cornerback, correct? My father was, my father, God bless him, 18 different cities, hauling six kids around, trying to make the best life he could

in the 30s and 40s for us. My mom was a saint because she had to take care of all of us and my older sister and the older brothers began to take care of Dennis, Liz, and myself, you know, and so it was that kind of time. But I remember my father at a time when he was at his worst, and it was never good enough. Whatever I did wasn't good enough. Whatever I did wasn't good enough. Whatever Lee did wasn't good enough. Whatever Lenny did wasn't good enough.

It just, show me more. Show me more. And I just remember here I did fail again. I failed again. Now I know he's passed and he passed when I was 25 years old but I think of my father a lot. And, you know, so I had his genes you know from that standpoint. You and I have talked about some of this privately I don't know that you've resolved all of the stuff that you have

as it regards to how you were shaped by your father and how you're driven because of your father and I find this to be the seeds of who you are. Well I wish he could have been there you know for all of those good moments and you know and he wasn't and so he wasn't there but you know he really his life and how he lived his life as an athlete and then how he lived his life after ball and what he had to do to keep surviving and supporting his family you know was very admirable you know the fact that there was a dysfunctional part of him that that may have made me look differently at him at the time. I don't now. I understand that. And so you've always seen forgive me if I tell the parts of the story to

the audience that they might not know. You always saw nobility in his janitorial work, but there was there was a darkness around him having failed to get to his dreams that came into your home. There was like, there was an unhappiness in him that was brought into the home, an energy. Yeah, yeah, it was a negative energy that we all dealt with, you know, but it wasn't because he wasn't working or that he wasn't out there trying. He worked after he got, you know, he got fired.

He worked at the General Electric Athletic Association at the executive club down there. I used to go down to set pins, and he used to run the cafeteria, and there's a basketball court there. And then when he got out of there, he opened up Lee Riley's Variety Store, which was 7 AM to 9 o'clock at night.

Mom and pop 7-eleven back in the day that I used to go over and work. The whole family used to work. And so he had a great, great work ethic, you know, but there was a tremendous amount of depression in his life. And I think this sort of ran rampant through the Riley family. And so I look at my dad and I just wish that he could have been there, you know, for those titles.

He could have been there for the 2006, that he could be here for the court that's going to be dedicated to me. But he's not. But he sees it from that standpoint. He's a great man, actually. He was. Yeah. Yeah. Proud of his son, I would say, as well. But what you're saying is he never got to see the things that others would, that he

never got to see what the rest of us got to see, which is Pat Riley has spent his last fifty years conquering sports. Like, I mean, reaching the very height of all the good things that can be reached in your sport. Yeah, and you know, I see it all the time now. I love seeing, you know, our players with their families. And I meet all the dads, you know, and I meet all the mothers, and they're there and they're present and it's a different generation now.

Oh, Pat, you've got a mafia family over there. Like, you've got your, what you have over there, you did at the beginning, what you said in the first years of Miami, you said a 19 or 20 knit group, you tied it up tight. You're not a terribly trusting person. That group is a lot bigger than 20 now. Like that you have, you've extended to family members so that you're trying to build something that is your own, you have built something that is your own personal religion over there. It's the religion of basketball and it comes in service of all the things that you've built over 50 years and all the things that you've learned over 50 years.

I think it's my responsibility, it's an obligation on my part to try to build that spirit, that spirit, you know, whether it's Zoe, Udonis, Bob McAdoo, Keith Askins, Glenn Rice, all of the players that we have kept on. It's a lot bigger than 20 now. Yeah, and they're all part of the family. They're an extended family, and I think it's not always the best because even in real families versus team families, there's always going to be those moments when people get sideways,

but that's what it's all about. Everybody keeps coming back to the center of the circle. I think that's important because they understand what we're about over there. So yeah, I think it's up to a son more than ever, if in fact there's any kind of a break in a relationship with a parent or there wasn't with my mother to reconcile. It's important for us to remember the good messages and the bad messages that you got in your education, but it's up to the son to come back to a dysfunctional relationship, maybe between a father and a son, and to reconcile.

It isn't up to the dad. They're too proud, probably. And so I never had a chance to reconcile, but I have. I have reconciled with him and all of that stuff. And so that to me was a very important mental breakthrough when I could finally let all of that go and know that he would be very proud of me and my mother would be very proud of me.

And I recall my mother, the last days in 2006, actually it was during the playoffs in April that she was in hospice and And I was going back and forth. And the players were very aware of what was going on as I was rushing in and out of practice, getting on a plane, going to Schenectady, and visiting her. And the last time I saw her, I remember I said, you know, just hang in there, I'll be back.

Mom, I'll be back tomorrow. And she said, get on. Get on with your life, Get on with your life. And I'm good and I'm okay. And I left and she passed that night and we were in Chicago at the time. And I got on the bus and I remember, you know, D Wade just putting his hand on my shoulder. You know, Shaq putting his hand on my shoulder. Shaq putting his hand on my shoulder.

So it's an extended family because I think we all go through it. And so one of the best things that came out of that was actually humorous because all of the flowers that were sent to my mom's funeral, the red ones I had crushed and I had made into rosary beads, you know, 50 rosary beads out of the flowers and white and yellow and red. And so when I used to tell the players to throw something personal into that pit, a 15-strong pit. I threw three or four rosary beads in there, you know. Shaquille found out about it and I remember the night that we won the championship in Dallas and at

the end of the game we all came in and started throwing those cards and everything up in the air and around and I said, God, I said, did we take our rings and our rosary beads and everything out of there and Shaq is down there helping me look for something. And Jay Sable came over and said, Coach, I got everything out of there at halftime. I knew we were gonna win. I knew this was gonna happen.

And so she was there along with my father that day and I felt great about it. And so she was there along with my father that day. And I felt great about it. And when Shaq and Wade put their hands on your shoulder and you're transported back to that moment, what's happening there? You're feeling the bonds that get made in basketball around life and death stuff? Yeah, they cared.

They just cared. They understood what was going on at the time, but we had something planned here to win a championship. It was their compassion and their empathy at that time as players that at times, both of them at times did not like me very much. They liked me, but they didn't like how I was because I was pretty honest. My truth and how I would present my truth, Dan, to the players is not their truth. And I might not even have known their real truth. I knew about all of my players and their backgrounds as much as I could but I could never get in between what was real and just what was fact. Having a knowledge of where they came from you know. Oh but Pat you're pushing the greatest of that you're seeing. Look this is a fine line that an aggressive pushing coach

is walking here. These are two championship worthy strengths, Shaquille O'Neal and Dwyane Wade, and you are pushing them at all turns to be better. You're challenging the best to be better by pushing them. You can be both of them. You had clashes with over just wait. I don't even know what else you were clashing over, but you wanted both of them to be fitter at various times. I don't know what kind of insult they took that to be. Well, when Shaq came, he wanted to come here. And I'll never forget when he came here, the first thing I did was weigh him. You know, he was OK.

He was open to everything. And I knew Shaq had one more in him. I knew he had it in him. And he was 383 at the time and about 14% body fat and or more and you know which was for him. Shaq is a big man. I mean he's a 380 pound guy you know and so by the end of the year he was 323 and 12%. That's 60 pounds that he lost. And the commitment that he made, you know, it wasn't that he was grossly out of shape, he was just shag. He was that big. And he

could still play big, but he played great. He played better that first year. And we got beat in the Eastern Conference Finals in the seventh game against Detroit his first year here. And he stayed that way. So whether it was weight or whether it was practice or being on time or whatever it was, you know, Dwayne was the consummate professional and I never had a problem with any kind of weight or body fat with Dwayne. He was off the charts physically and athletically in his discipline. But he had a tough, you see he had a tough road to hoe when Dwayne grew up. He's told his story a lot so I don't have to talk about it. So I had tremendous compassion and empathy for his story and how he got away from being sucked into that life. He didn't have, by the time he arrived in Miami

to be the face of your franchise, he didn't have like life tools that would be brought by having a stable upbringing of any kind. He was arriving very raw to Miami, and you guys helped make him, shape him into the face of a franchise. And look at him today. I mean, the guy can do a game show on TV, he can do almost anything.

He is so creative, so versatile. I'm so happy for his success, Shaquille's success. And the fact that they've become even more honest to the public about their lives. They're better at broadcasting than you ever were. They broadcast well and they reveal more about themselves than you do. They do. And that's what happens to us when we leave the game and they'll find out there will be another stage in their life when they get into their 60s that they'll feel even more compassion and empathy for a lot of things. And so you know as we go back to

what I was when I got here, you know, if I told somebody at 29 what I was like versus I'm 80 and they're 29 now, is that I don't take like I used to from them. I never took their money or anything I didn't want like I used to from them. I never took their money or anything, I didn't want to. I mean, I didn't wanna find people, but I took a lot of possibly sometimes their pride and their ego. Ego to me is the acronym is etching God out.

There's gotta be a spirit that comes from within. You don't have to be religious to have that kind of ego. I always use the acronyms also of all of the time you're either an aht, a sat, or a not, an all of the time great player, a some of the time great player, or a none of the time great player. some of the time great player or none of the time great player and so I'd walk in and you know well you're gonna sound it today right is that what it's about and then they say no I'm I'm I'm a not today I'm gonna go sit in the corner over there and so you can have a lot of fun with your great players when when they come back at you with some truth. But yes, they're much better at broadcasting, but I think all of us get a little bit truthful.

So I don't take that now from the team. I'm totally separate. I believe in Eric and what he's done and how he's expanded his coaching staff and his mentality about coaching the generational player today and I approve wholeheartedly that he's on the right track and that he's gonna be one of the all-time great coaches you know and I'm

glad we were able to have that kind of continuity so I'm not like I used to be you know players are not afraid of me anymore you know I used to be. Players are not afraid of me anymore. They used to be a little bit afraid of me. I can have decent conversations with players without warning them or threatening them or any of that kind of stuff, which I don't want to do. Well, it's been pretty marvelous to see what it is that you've built over there because you've handed it over to Spolstra and Andy

Ellisberg and Nick and Mickey Harrison. They all run the organization with you and around you. You've got a trust of five people. You're a lifer and a loyalist guy. These are people who are your family forever, but I've always been fascinated by the relationship between you and Spoh because I assume since he's been there as a video coordinator from the beginning that you guys probably have some dad son stuff like some of the tension that I have with my dad he's seen you from the inside you've seen him from the inside and he's probably now got his own ideas about how to coach a team that might not be necessarily how you want to coach it he had he had him right from the beginning.

Every now and then, I have a pretty good track record and a pretty good reputation. So I think as soon as I promoted Eric, he had to make sure that he could stand up against me or stand up to what it was that I wanted versus what he wanted. And I remember. So from the beginning. I still at that time was a control freak and I still thought I was a coach and I was gonna control things.

And the more and more I let go of that control of the coach and what he did on the court, who he hired and how he's gonna run things, the better it became for Eric. And now I feel totally confident that he knows what he's doing at a very high level, even more so than I today in the contemporary game. And so I totally trust him. And that's part of it, you know. I mean, I mean trust is probably the number one ingredient that any leader must have from his players. But also you have to, there has to be a real true sincerity in that trust that I or Eric

don't want anything more out of the players that are going, it's gonna benefit me. I want them to get out of the game what they really desire. And I want him to get out of the game what he desires as Mickey wanted me to get out of the game, maybe what I desire, not just for his own benefit. And so the sincerity part of trust is so important and competency comes with experience. You can be

competent because you're in the video room where you worked with me for three or four years but now you're out there in front of everybody and so you know I try to control that a little bit in the beginning and so he became more and more and more competent. And when you have competency, players will say, I will let you coach me. You know what you're talking about. I know how hard you work and I know what you're saying is believable so I will let you coach me. If you're lying to them and you're not competent, they'll figure you out in a moment. You're not, you don't work at it, you're not good enough, I don't believe what you say, and so, and

they won't play for you. I mean, he is highly competent and he's very, very reliable. At the end you have to be reliable, but in this business you can't be totally reliable because it's a harsh business. You might have to trade somebody and I used to tell the players that you know you and I can have trust and sincerity and competency and all that stuff. And at some point I might have to trade you. I might have to trade you. You know. What do the fights look like with Eric? Like over the years the arguments, the disagreements. No I think I think distance, you know, and silence is okay. It's okay for a while. Just let it simmer. Just angry repressed men with their backs to each

other that the organization can function without us talking for ten minutes. Yeah, and that's okay. That's not what you mean. Yeah, it's okay, but it's not the most mature way to communicate. No, but no, it's not but in the beginning it was you know to communicate with by by having a no-talk You know, it's okay Succession's a tricky thing though. It's very tricky. Yeah, I mean you Eric's bolster is good enough to do the job that you've always been the best at He might not ever feel like he's good enough to meet the standards of the best because I would imagine that living in your shadow would be quite the burden. Well you know maybe somebody may have told him that one time

maybe his father you know might have told him that but as I said in the beginning I think I think a lot of times, coaches who followed me, if I was still in the organization, it wasn't the easiest thing to do, but I had to let go of that. In order for Eric to really grow in his first two years, and he made the playoffs his first two years, I thought that was a great prep runway for the big three. So he made the playoffs the first two years. Dwayne was almost MVP. Michael Beasley was drafted and then we got a

chance to get the big three and we got him and then and then he made his mark as a hell of a coach for finals and two world titles. So in the beginning, I might have been a little bit harsh with him with my comments, but whether he responded to me verbally in the right way, didn't make any difference to me. I started to see the results on the court and in practice,

and that was enough. And so now I don't have to say anything. What I'm seeing every day, I love. It's a manifestation of all of the things you guys have built together as a great team for a long time, which is unusual. Why are you a control freak? I don't know. I don't know. I think when you're put in a position of responsibility and you have this image, I've talked about this a lot, that you have this image. I'm a dreamer. I always have pictured what it would look like again to win and how it would feel. I did that in Los Angeles six times. And so I had great experience with how that feels. And I also had great experience with how hard it is to get there.

And I don't care if you are a coach or a rock star like Springsteen or it all starts somewhere and it manifests itself over the years into real greatness as a team as a band or whatever and and so you know I had this image and and I had to relay that image every day to the players and to the staff about what it was going to look like when we got there and but they had to believe in it themselves because if they don't believe in it then it determines your behavior as a player. If you see that like I see it, It inspires them as players, if they see the image like I explained it to them, and it fuels

their motivation to try to get that, and I try to get that across to the players all the time. And when I do speak to them via examples, I don't talk to the players that much as a group, like I used to, stand up in front of them, put their backs against the wall and give one of those 20 minute talks. I don't do that. Spoh does a hell of a job with that. But that's why I think when it comes to you having control is that you have to have a sense of ownership in that image and that in so that control. I was gonna go deeper than that. The reason I was I was pop psychology over here. Okay. I'm assuming that you're a control freak because you leave your house like a bat

out of hell at 18 years old, you're hell-bent on athletic success, you're your own man, you're free in the world, and you're going to show your dad or your family that you're going to be a success in the world. You don't control much of anything other than your own self-sufficiency. You can take care of yourself. Pat Riley knows how to take care of himself. What can Pat Riley control in a turbulent environment, Whatever's happening at home, he can control himself,

his own pain threshold, everything else. So I assume that the coach that was made in front of me was sharpened by the 25 years before he even got, or the 20 years before he got into the professional sports pipeline. I'm assuming that you are a control freak at about 20. Without a doubt, we were survivors. If my father gave us one thing, all of us,

is you're on your own. And when we all got the opportunity to leave, we left. We went to different cities. We didn't stay in that city and become work for whatever. We didn't become. We just went. And you outgrew what could have been a very small life. Yes, and in in in we're fortunate You know, I got a scholarship to Kentucky. I was good in sports and had I not been good I probably would have ended up in the military most likely and I didn't you know

Cuz I had four years at Kentucky and the Vietnam War was raging. The most formatted years of my life were 1960 to 1970, 15 to 25 years old when it was all about civil rights and young people in this country and it was all about, you know, the war and the hatred for the war back in the 60s. But I was climbing, I was surviving. I mean, while all that was going on, you know, I was in, you know, in high school becoming great. I was in Kentucky becoming great.

I went into the NBA, I thought I was great, and then I found out I was average. And all of that was going on. I was very conscious of it. But when you're in that survival mode of trying to make it to be recognized for something, you know, I wasn't paying much conscious of it, but when you're in that survival mode of trying to make it to be recognized for something You know, I wasn't paying much attention to it Even though I was I was probably being formed, you know

By all those things that were happening in our world at that time and it seems like it is and a damn the same way And race relations you didn't even mention race like your but your yeah You're coming through basketball playing for a Kentucky team that is at the center of racial strife like you are. Yeah, you're coming. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is a civil rights icon during that time fighting with Bill Russell and everybody else. You're learning about race relations through basketball. Well, I found out a lot about those relations. Two of my heroes in high school were Jackie Washington and Ray

Young, both black players that played. They were seniors when I was a sophomore, and I loved both of those guys. Winnie Winfield was on the team at the time. And so I was used to having friendships with black players, African-American people that's connected in New York. When I got to Kentucky, there friendships with black players, African American people, as connected in New York. When I got to Kentucky, there were no black players around anywhere. And we used to play against teams up north that had a lot of African American players. But when

we played Texas Western in that game, I was not thinking much about the fact that they were an all-black starting team and we were an all-white starting team. I didn't think much about it at all. This was a game to try to win the national championship and I never forgot how it felt, you know, when we walked out under the court for the center jump. You know, they had David Latten, you know, Bobby Joe Hill, Austin Artis, Harry Flanoy, and Neville Shedd, Neville the Shadow Shedd, that was their starting lineup. I can't believe you remember all the starters. It was a long time ago.

I just remember walking out on the court and, you know, we nodded at one another. There wasn't a lot of, we just lined up, but I felt that just by looking into their eyes, that they were playing for a hell of a lot more than the NCAA championship. I just felt that, and they dominated us. The very first play was a lob to David Latten,

who dunked it over the top of me. And they beat us like a drum that day. Not like a drum, but they beat us pretty handily in the second half. And I remember the joy that they felt. I mean, losing an NCAA final is bad. And so I felt miserable. I cried on the bench. I remember going into the locker room and shaking their hand. Louis Dampier went in after the game

too and shook their hand. And you know the funny thing about that, I created a relationship with these men over the years and when I got into the NBA, I'd be walking out after a game, going down some hallway and then, hey, Pat, you know, it'd be Willie Cager, it'd be Neville the Shadow Shad. Harry Flanoy, who actually was their starting power forward, worked for the Lakers when I was coaching in the sales department. I didn't even know about it. He was too embarrassed to come and talk to me about it. And so when Jerry Bruckheimer did the movie Glory Road, I got to meet all

of those guys again in New York and we had a ball. We related. And I remember Neville saying at the end of the credits, I just remember him saying this at the end of the credits because they had their feelings too and we had ours. And he said, I just wish we as men, you know, back then at that moment when there was so much crisis going on in our country with race relations and that we could have gone down and shook each other's hand and hugged each other. I remember him saying that at the end of the film and well I I got more than enough hugging you know at that premiere and then I got invitations on a regular basis. I never went down, Don Haskins their head coach they would like honor that team like every year you know at in Nalpaso, Texas, and they wanted me to come down. And I got to the point where I knew them well enough

where I said, oh, oh, so you want me to come down and be your foil again, right? And, you know, troll me a little bit on we got you guys. And so I'm actually proud, Dan, now that I was part of a game that was historical that became a game that that integrated sports in the South. Bob McAdoo when he came to the to the Lakers and obviously he's been with us for 30 years now and when he came to the Lakers as a player, and we were stretching one day and he was just to the team, he came up to me after the practice and he said, you know, the reason

why I went to North Carolina, and he's from North Carolina, the reason why I went south and went to the ACC in North Carolina is because Texas Western kicked your ass in 1966. I said, Bob, if that's the reason why you got to here, I'm happy about it. Okay. I actually feel good about losing. That's about the only time that's ever gonna happen. But I felt that I didn't feel the significance of it at the moment because writers wouldn't really write about it that much. Everybody knew how obvious it was, but it was a turning point that integrated all of the South when it came to scholarship African-American players. It was just great. It was a great time.

Have you met your standard? Have you, at 79 years old, do you look back at your life and say that you have had the success? Yes, I met my standard in 1968. Yeah, her name is Christine Carolyn Rodstrom. People don't know the romantic side of you. Married 50 years. Married 57. Whatever it is, you know, but I remember I was selling season tickets for the San Diego Rockets and I had this nice bright blue suit on, white shirt with a nice tie. Season tickets back then were $410 for a pair, so I'd get $41 for every two I sold. I was in a kiosk on the mezzanine of the San Diego Sports Arena. It was summertime, they were playing basketball games on the floor. They had a league and I'm at this kiosk and I see

this woman walk across the mezzanine and she had this beautiful summer dress and it was swaying in the breeze as she was walking and then she actually walked towards me and came over to the kiosk with a friend who was with her and played for the San Diego Chargers and he introduced me to her and you know then I took a look into those hazel eyes you know and that warm smile and I said you know and this was it that was it you know because I'd never been in love ever and that was I was awestruck on site I was determined I was determined to to find this beautiful person and I did and it started with a walk on the beach you know and it started with a nice cream cone that we shared

Neapolitan ice cream cone you're such a sucker for love started also with long drives in my Corvette. Here we go. But no, long drives in that Corvette during the sun and underneath the stars and listening to Motown because that was our music and it's still our music today. And with the exception of the boss who I let in every now and then, but she has been the rock.

We all, you know, a lot of husbands will say this, you know, but she has been the rock. She gave up a career to become Mrs. Coach, and she has been as important to my success. I don't just say this because she's my wife, raising our family, and all of those missed opportunities, missed that I missed because I gave so much to the game that she took up the slack.

So I met my standard then and she's my standard today, but when it comes to the game, I've reached I think what that standard is and I know there's no such thing as perfection. The reason I ask the question is because I imagine you're very hard on yourself. I don't know how forgiving you are. Not anymore. I used to be, you know, and you saw it up raw and personal but I'm not anymore. You know, I mean when you get to be my age I feel good. I can I think still give a lot to the heat and to players but my life is

is more full than it ever has been with James Patrick Riley and Connor James Riley and Elizabeth Marie Riley and now Olivia James Riley, Riley, and Paul, her husband, it changes. You're a grandpa. You're allowed to be a grandpa. I didn't mean to interrupt you though on throwing flowers toward Chris because I don't think people understand

just how hard it is to be Mrs. Coach and how it is that in order for you to have the strength to be the best you, it requires an obsessive compulsiveness that doesn't make one present in the marriage or in family as maybe they're present when they're home, but what they're doing to pursue excellence is consuming. Yes, and she's just as OCD as I am.

So that's a good match right there because she's just as great in that detailed part of life and trying to make everything right for us and a family. At this stage of my life, that OCD behavior is still there. I'll give you one of the habits that I always do. Just prior to training camp, all my training camps I would go out and I would go down and clean out the garage, you know. Every minute I wasn't making a master plan for training camp or a practice plan, just

before we would start training camp, I was in the garage reorganizing, you know, cleaning out, throwing things out. Now I do it in my closet, it's the same kind of OCD. I can't go to training camp until that closet is perfect, you out, throwing things out. Now I do it in my closet. It's the same kind of OCD. I can't go to training camp until that closet is perfect. Throw it away, whatever. We all have these little quirks that we do that we know it's time, whatever it is. It's not taking a last vacation.

I'm a big, big, big, big time music guy who steal all the lyrics from the greatest bands. The greatest songs. Oh, you find great inspiration in music. You've sent me so much good music over the years because it moves you in a soulful place. It changes me. It changes me.

I mean, these are great, great writers. These songwriters. And some of the words in their lyrics that you hear, my god, you know, do I relate to that song and the music, you know, and so yeah, I'm a music buff, I'm not everything. You know, Kareem used to be, you know, an aficionado when it came to jazz. His dad, I think, played an instrument and turned cream onto jazz at a very young age. I remember listening to doo-wop music and the first song that I heard on radio was by the Skyliners, singing Since I Don't Have You in 1955, and is when I had a crush on this girl in seventh grade.

And so, but when Motown hit my life in the 60s with the Four Tops, Miracles and Temptations, Forget It, I found Just My Imagination, Running Away From You. I just remember all those songs. That song, Just My Imagination by the Temptations, takes me back to 1971. Will Chamberlain, Happy Harrison and myself, we were walking out of a hotel in San Francisco and I got into the cab and they both got in the back seat

and it came on the radio, the song, and I started singing it out loud and I knew all the words. And Wilts says, what did you, who are you, you like this kind of music, Riley? I said, absolutely. I said, have you heard this song? He said, no, they had just come out with it.

So yeah, music has played a big part, more so than even reading. Forgive me, I led you astray though. You were talking about you're no longer as unforgiving on yourself. You're no longer as hard on yourself as you used to be. No, can't be, it's unhealthy now, God. Well I wanna talk to you about-

I wanna live a little longer, so. I wanna talk to you about mortality and immortality. I wanna talk to you about both these things because I don't know how you regard your legend they're gonna put they're putting your name is on the court it is something that I don't associate with the living you are somebody whose legacy is secure in basketball and you and I have had experiences recently burying people we care about. So you're thinking how about mortality these days as you find your daily inspirations in the work? Well you think about one's mortality at this

age you don't think about it when you're 20. You think you're gonna live forever. I lost my father when I was 25, but you know, I never thought much about my own personal mortality at the time, but a lot of my really, really dear friends that I've known for a long time have passed and really close, and you begin to think about it. And I think about those moments that we've been together. And just the other day, a picture popped up of a very dear friend who passed two years ago. And we used to go on these cruises together. And the first thing we would do is we would bring

our little boom box, our Wi-Fi Bluetooth box with a playlist. And every time we went on a trip, he would make a new playlist and I would make a new playlist. And so before dinner every night, he and I got up there a half an hour early just to play the playlist. He'd listen to one of my songs, I'd listen to one of his songs, we'd have a martini before all the other guests came up. And so, you know, he's gone.

And I really miss him. And it was a long distance relationship, but it was it was always a relationship And so you know when Jerry West you know passed it was very difficult For me and one of the reasons why I you know I kidded Mickey about you know a little bit about What he's doing he and Nick and the Harrison family Mickey and Madeline. You know Nick and Kelly and Jenna and Ronnie You know for Mickey to do this you know and to bestow this and Madeleine, Nick and Kelly and Jenna and Ronnie. For Mickey to do this and to bestow this incredible honor on me, it's very uncomfortable for me.

That's not something that I like. When Tim Donovan would let me know that I was coach of the year, okay, thank you. So know that I was coach of the year? Okay, thank you. So what do I gotta do? Well, David Stern wants to give you the trophy at halftime. I said, no, let's do it in the back room somewhere, away from everybody, and we can get it on video.

And finally, David called me on the phone. He said, no, we are doing it at half court at halftime. You understand, Riley? That's the relationship he and I had. And that's, Riley? That's the relationship he and I had. And that's how Mickey- That's the relationship he had with everybody. And that's Mickey. When I said, Mickey, I'm not gonna do this.

And Mickey finally said, you are going to do this. We are going to do this. Do you understand? We are doing this. And I wanna do it now. And Nick and I have talked about it. Madeline we want to do this for you and you know and I absolutely just broke out and it just took me back to

that time again, it always does. So it's a wonderful honor and to have that but I still got a lot of life left in me and I'm kicking so. I'm not killing you yet. I'm not killing you yet. I think about mortality because we all do at this time when you read about those people that you know, you've seen, you've watched, you've admired that leave us early and maybe it's not early.

And especially when they're dear, dear dear friends you just can't stop going back to those moments you spent together. You said broke out though, broke out how? Emotional because as a family they're insisting on honoring you. Pat, you built something, you built something down here that is eternal. Like you made South Florida this century the sports successes that this town has had Has had them because of what you and Dwyane Wade did since since 2003 there have it You know the Panthers won recently before a 20 year run You built something here that you you know in 2006 you stopped feeling like a failure

And now they honor you and you broke out how? Well, we, it's not me, I always try to, we always talk into the I, vernacular I, I, we have built something, really built something, but Nick was going through a deck of marketing things that they were trying to accomplish this year. One of them was the new scoreboard, and he showed me that.

And some new partners. Robin Hood now is our patch. And Kaseya is obviously the name that we put on the building. And then he got, we're gonna do this with the court, and I looked at the court. I said, I like those colors, that's great. And then I just looked away, I said, what's next? And he pushed it towards me and he said,

look at the court again, I looked at it again. And I said, that's fine, Nick. I said, I like the colors. And then he pushed it to me again and he said, no, look, look right in front of the scores table and then I saw it. And then as soon as I saw it, no, look, look right in front of the scores table, and then I saw it. And then as soon as I saw it, boom, they came. And they come in a flood.

They just flood. They just flood out. Even now in front of Nick, who's the CEO, who at one time, and I don't like to kid about this anymore, because at one time he was a ball boy in the huddles listening to me cursing all the time. And now he's the boss. Yes, and I couldn't help myself.

It just, I just, the, it's too big for Pat. Yeah, that's how I looked at it. And I don't need it, I don't want that kind of attention, and I really don't, but I'm gonna take it. I don't want that kind of attention and I really don't and but I'm gonna take it and I love the fact that Mickey and Madeline, Nick, you know Jenna, you know Kelly Ronnie, the Harrison clan, the family, especially Mickey, you know, would do this. So I mean, I wish I could do something for him in return. And I actually said, Mickey, damn it, Mickey and Pat.

Let's put Mickey and Madeleine, Pat and Chris, court, whatever it is. I tried to get out of it any way I could, but he wouldn't have it. He's been a blessing for me, Dan. He's like a brother. What a great owner to have. No, he's a great, he's been a blessing for me Dan What a great brother. What a great owner to know. He's a guy. He's like a brother to me. We have a great relationship When we go out and we have occasionally both of us don't drink like we used to drink But when we go out and have dinners together And we would reminisce he'd laugh like hell man

If I may though, and I don't want to interpret your tears, but if you're sobbing It's at least in part because these people this family with him with whom you have a genuine love Because you've lived life as you're inspecting mortality and burying some of your friends. You're like wow We did something really beautiful together and here this gift you're bestowing me to to appreciate me for how I contributed to your family's building this thing. You felt loved there. Absolutely, you know, and you know, I mean, you know, Mickey and I are not like, you know, cuddly huddly, you know, kinds know kinds of men you know but I think we have this genuine deep respect very repressed the both of you very repressed yes cavemen who bang into each other. I'm just saying like you guys

hardened by a lifetime in sports I don't know whether you would tell each other you would love each other but him putting your name on the court is an act of love. Yeah, it definitely was. I felt it and Chris felt it. So she's geeked about it because she always thinks that I turn down too many things. But it's going to be a great night for me. Why does it embarrass you though?

What? Because a coach is supposed to be, I mean, come on, Pat. You were the fashion model coach. You were a fashion model coach you were a fashion icon on the sidelines you bought all your bullshit back then you in 30 and when you were in your early... I tried to do that then yeah oh absolutely no I was trying to create not a brand but I was trying to create the image of what a coach should look like on the sidelines and period and you did and I did and the

fact that I became GQ or whatever it is or Armani this tremendous respect because I think all coaches should conduct themselves if you're running the most important part of building a multi-billion dollar organization that that front man you know has to not only present himself in a manner that people will be respected but he has to present himself you know in press conferences and everything in a way that that they will have respect so well you know back in the 80s it was you know yeah I would agree to go on a GQ

magazine or I would agree to do commercials I would agree to do those things but no more. Write books you were writing books. I wrote some books and it was it was a terrible time for me to be writing those books because the players didn't like it and I said some things in those books about things behind the scenes not bad but that all of a sudden you know Pat is the guy that's in the middle of that circle and and I felt it and and I didn't want that. And I stopped doing all those things when I came here. I did some things that I had to finish up in New York

and I brought them down here to Miami, but I stopped doing commercials. I stopped being in the center of everything because that's where the players should be. And I think a coach has to be around the periphery of that circle with them in the center where yes you come in and join and you teach and you coach but it's theirs. You were still this in New York though in New York in Los Angeles

and New York you were buying you were buying all the stock in Pat Riley ego you believe that you're the greatest coach because your results are getting the greatest results and you were you felt you were the reason for the success. The players too but they wouldn't have been as good if not for being pushed by you. When did you put down the idea of I've got to have less ego about this? Well it's like Sisyphus right? You know you stop pushing that rock uphill you think you're the only one that has to keep pushing the rock up the hill and then there's people behind you that's pushing

the rock up the hill the same way and and you know so you know I stopped trying to be the only one pushing that rock up the hill that that that it really was you know the players and I had enough I was a little bit embarrassed by all of that kind of attention I was. I have not become media shy. I just don't do media because it's not my voice anymore. It's Coach Spoh's voice who's in front of the media three, four times a day.

I don't want to get in in the middle of my opinion. It could be different than his and you know how that takes off virally in a negative manner and so and I'm sure they'll pick something out of this interview to do that. But I'm waiting. I'm waiting. I'm not gonna end it until I get it. I'm not gonna sit. No, I'm gonna sit here until I get it. I'm gonna interview you for hours until I get it. I'm not gonna sit, no, I'm gonna sit here until I get it. I'm gonna interview you for hours until I get that one moment that I could just clip and throw to the aggregates and then just feed off it.

Feed off the clicks. I trust that you will edit this in the proper manner of due respect in a 30 year relationship that we have. Trust. It's an interactive relationship, Dan, that you and I have that brings about a result, which is friendship. I have I never understood why it is that you trust me because I find

your organization to be distrustful and I don't even mean that private I should say and I don't think you trust many. I think I'm not sure how your your circle as I've been observing you for 30 years, tends to be pretty small. It's either the people who are working on this thing with you, and you don't have a whole lot of use for anybody else. Well, not really that, it's just that I think

it's important to keep the family tight knit, you know? And so, the family's expanded, you know, from 20 people in 1995 to over 150 people, you know, and so the family gets bigger and bigger and you can't control all of that and you shouldn't want to. Generationally it's already 30 years, so that's three generations of people that have changed, you know, from that standpoint. And so I don't know what the one thing that I have to say to you that you're gonna say, haha, that's it. I don't know what it is. I haven't gotten it yet. Ask me that specific question. Maybe I'm gonna surprise you with it. You can't

know it's coming. I've got to surprise you at the end and then I'll yell a ha in your face and then I'll betray every trust you've ever had. But when it is that you look at the things that you have been in your life, the chasing, there's winning and there's misery. What has been the cost of a lifetime dedicated to sports excellence? The cost has been obviously probably some of my health, mental health, physical health,

to estrangement probably that normally I wouldn't. And quite frankly, since I've been here in Miami, with the exception of a few, and I don't even mind those few, I've been treated extremely well by the media, even the media today who continue to cover the ones that have been here 30 years with me, you know, too. They've criticized me, they've been fair with me, they've been objective, and because we've had

some pretty bad years here, and so you know I've had a trust with all these people and it doesn't bother me, you know, when I get criticized anymore. It used to bother me. Maybe that's why I would shut the media out and that's why I would nickname them peripheral opponents because they can, at times, even the best of the best, you know, bring a team down. They could divide a team, you know, and I know on social media today that that can happen a lot and well I don't talk that much about it to the players today because I think they're mature enough and they're different in a way that I

think they think they can handle all the social media stuff but it does become a major distraction. Oh I don't know how you adopt to today's player. I don't I have no earthly idea I haven't talked to you about this but I don't have any idea how you observe you know sitting out back-to- backs or showing up at media day in a wig or or Just missing games like I what I I Would have handled it differently there's no doubt, but I can I can the the the players who want to express themselves in a way that You know is absolutely anti what my beliefs are in representing an organization, whether it's to grow a bigger brand,

to make more money, to go out there that separates themselves a little bit from the pack. There's nothing you can do about that. The league wants it. Content is king. And I have found that out, that trying to keep the media out, the commissioner won't allow that. Access is what it's all about. And so players' personalities today, the younger generation is just different than it was when I grew up. I grew up, and I think most of us my age, grew up at a time when our parents were

harder if we had them. If we had what they would call the nuclear family, it was hard, but it was different. There was, even if it was a stone cold house, there was love there. You had a place to go home every night and there were two parents that cared about you, that provided for you, that maybe they didn't love you like you wanted them to love you, but it was different. You know, and I'm not saying today's player is not that, but it was harder and we understood that. And so I understand this generation of players and how they want to go about living their life is different. And the music they listen to and how they brand themselves and what they wear and how they dress, it might be a little bit more flamboyant than what I want, but that's who they are.

And I respect that. But if there's a difference, be who you want to be. be who you want to be, but in one of the great biblical terms, you'll render unto Caesar, you know, what is his. You know, and when the, you know, his apostles, when the apostles were trying to give all of their money to our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, he said, no, pay Caesar what he wants, what he is, and then give it to other people. And so as players, they have to render unto the heat, no, pay Caesar what he wants, what he is, and then give it to other people. And so as players, they have to render unto the heat really what is theirs, too. And while they go out there and they do all these other things, you can't shortcut it with us.

And so I've actually explained this to the players, is that while you're under contract to us you do owe us something. Your collective bargaining agreement contract says that and so don't ever take that lightly and we have a very cooperative group of people but yes yeah I feel like I owe and I have to render unto to Mickey, he's my boss, you know, I don't do it in any other way other than with respect and I feel the same way about the players. When I ask you about the cost of excellence,

where do you have regret on what the cost was? I'm never going to apologize to my players for being tough. Never. That's who I was, that's how I was coached, that's how I was raised, that was my approach. But I also had a tremendous compassion for him even when I was tough on him. So if there's one regret that I might have, it would be a familiar regret of not being there really enough for my kids. The schedule just makes it almost impossible. I know it sounds like an excuse, but even long distance, there wasn't FaceTime back then. There wasn't any of these things where you could really contact

them other than a call at night, you know, with Elizabeth, you know, talk to Chris, put Elizabeth on for a minute, put James on for a minute, you know, we're chasing our dreams out there still. And that to me, and also, you know, not know not being around you know Chris as much as I you know at that time too and traveling and that's why I don't travel now that much because I don't want to be away from her you know at this age you know so and he's got the trips he's got the road trips and he mixes up the road trips now by going and seeing you know the Eagles or Springsteen or something so. Oh but Pat it's not just the schedule though it was the schedule combined with the

obsession. You were and you are a maniac. Yeah well I'm not a maniac but I was definitely preoccupied. You can call it you know whatever you want describe it. You just told me I couldn't call it maniac. It's obsessed, you were obsessed with work, with excellence, with not getting caught from behind. Who is it, you are too. Correct, but it pulls me away from some of the things that I love that you're now talking about

when you're saying I wish I could have been there, especially when you're saying I wanna be there every minute now with Chris, because you have a better appreciation for the stuff that actually matters the most. That matters the most, right. Yeah. So, you know, when you come to, you know, that thought process, I'll steal another quote, don't know who the author was. A man or woman's greatest fear is their fear of extinction, but what they should fear even more than that is to become extinct one day with insignificance.

And what that always meant to me is that all I ever wanted to do in my life is something that mattered and counted. And I did that in sports. I didn't do that as a husband or a father as much as I wish I could have. So that's something that we all talk about. When talk to long time life coaches, they would, at my age, all of them say the same thing. I wish I could have. Nick Saban, Dick Bennett, these coaches that are getting out of college basketball that are great coaches

and they were asked questions why they're leaving at such an early age and they're all talking about I always felt that my job as a coach was to develop young men, was to help them grow and when they graduate from my university that they're ready and this NIL or this portal or all the things that are going on in college sports right now has driven some of the greatest coaches you know from what their passion was and what they thought they were doing out. But what you're talking about Pat correct me if I'm wrong you're not just talking about the schedule when you say I wish I could what you're saying about, correct me if I'm wrong, you're not just talking about the schedule. When you say, I wish I could, what you're saying is the demands of the job are such

that if you're going to be obsessed enough to be excellent, that combined with the schedule makes it almost fundamentally impossible for someone to be a present father and husband. Maybe some figure it out because they've got some magical stardust, but you thought you had to be working 20 hours a week, correct? Or 20 hours a day? Well we did, but Chris and I figured it out. I mean we figured it out and you understand it. So I mean just the nature of the job for 57 years is that our life was from September until the end of the season, May, April, May, June. You're in this life and it could be a wonderful Orient Express ride or a train wreck and you have to go through that and your life is owned by a schedule and you have to go through that. And your life is owned by a schedule,

and you have to work everything around that schedule. That's all there is to it. And so, you know, when you have that kind of schedule, and then your vacation time is simply from August to September 1st, and that's it, every year. Because you're winning late into the season. Every season. It's like one big run on September.

No, but there's also, it's not just on a treadmill, it's also there's winning and there's misery. So you're, you're, you're joyless? No. Well when you're winning, you're joyful, but then when you're not, you're miserable. Is that not what you're bringing home? Well sometimes, you know, sometimes, you know, the whole winning and misery thing I think is just a saying about trying to accentuate, you know, sometimes, you know, the whole winning in misery thing, I think, is just a saying about trying to accentuate, you know, to your players. Look, I'm going to tell you something. There's winning and there's misery and there's no in-between. All this joy crap and all that stuff, you know, this is winning. It's not even joyful. It's you win to get to the next game,

you know, and if you lose, you're miserable and you're more anxious to get to the next game, you know, and if you lose you're miserable and you're more anxious to get to the next game to win. And so I hate to have sort of created that message today because it's not that way. But I can tell you once the season was over with and you go down the rabbit hole for you know a week or two if you didn't win, I'm a pretty joyous man and we have a lot of fun and I can leave a lot of that behind me. It doesn't mean that I'm not making some trade in the middle of the Mediterranean, a five team trade you know or whatever it is, but you, I've learned over the years to be able to lighten that load on my mind to live a life of normalcy.

You're not as obsessed as you used to be. No, I'm not, you know, but I'm not. And I'm glad I'm not, I can't be. But I'm still totally engaged. But I'm not obsessed. How do you measure success though, at this point? What does success look like? Well, success to me now is health, happiness,

hunger, and humility. The four H's to me, that's what I would call it. I mean, if I can be successful that way right now at the stage of my life and obviously you know winning will make all of that easier, I think your priorities definitely change. My work priorities are still the same. I'm not this kind of person that I was when I was trying to survive and climb and achieve and all those things. And I could walk through the office at the American Airlines Arena at the time when it

was called that and not talk to anybody. You know, it didn't mean that I disliked them. It said that I'm walking to my office and there's tunnel vision and I'd always say good morning to Karen you know my longtime executive assistant. Pat when I say you're a maniac I just don't know I don't know if the people know what that laser focus has been for a long time that what the job required for you to beat everyone else that was trying to win meant that you had to be totally lopsided as a human being on where your compulsive obsessions were like you had to be totally lopsided as a human being on where your

compulsive obsessions were. Like you couldn't be thinking about much of anything else. The job required too much of you. I agree with you on that and I was that. I remember Mickey one time you know we're talking this is I don't know back in maybe 2004 or 2003 or whatever it was. And those weren't very good years for us after we made the major trade and broke up that first, Tim and Zo team that he was talking to me, we were having dinner and he were laughing. And he says, you know, he said,

when you walk around the office and we're starting to expand now at the arena, and especially on the business side, yeah, could you just say hello to somebody? And I say, am I not saying hello to people? He said, I don't think so. And I know I nod when I walk by them, but it's not personal. It is never personal.

It's just I was always in a hurry to get to work. I was always in a hurry, I had something in my mind, I had to get it out of my piece of paper. Do you know where that comes from? I don't know where it comes from. Your obsessive work ethic that made you great comes from blank. Failure. The fear, we all have a fear of not making it. So when my career was over as a player, it was over. And my best friend at the time, and I called him, I had a knee operation,

but I felt I had another year left in the league. Jerry West became the head coach of the Lakers. And that training camp was going to start in October and I called them that summer. He had just lived in my house while I was at Phoenix and he got married to Karen and he got married to Karen in 78 but I called Jerry his first year of coaching. I said let me come to training camp try to make the team. I'm gonna make good contract." And he said, no. This thing about Jerry that I loved, he was honest as hell, man. He was honest and truthful. And he said no. And I was taken back a little bit by that and I said, you know I can help training camp. He said, no, you're done. You were

done. And then he explained to me something, and this is how he thought. I had filed for a workman's compensation disability policy that the NBA had just put in that would give you 40% of your salary if you retired with an injury, and you'd get it for three years. And so I had that, but I couldn't play again. If I played again, that would be gone away. So he said, Pat, don't lose that three years of income for one, for getting cut in training camp. And so he knew it, and he was looking out for me, because he knew I wasn't good enough to make his team and he was very blunt with me about, you know, you're done.

And I retired and for a year and a half Chris and I had probably some of the most miserable moments of our life. What are we going to do next? And then I got the call. This is when you were starving, right? You're not even saying that. Out of the game, out of the game. But when you're saying starving, you're saying, right? You're not even saying that. Out of the game, out of the game. When you're saying starving,

you're saying emotionally there. You're not saying like you're out of money. You're saying that you're lost because you've lost your identity. The thing you thought you were gonna be is gone. We all did. Nine years it was over with, and now what am I gonna do next?

You bury him and now you're scared, and this woman, this love of your life, helps save you, rescue you, support you, through, hold your hand through the darkness. Oh, we both had a good time. We went to the beach every day. I had a 1974 GMC van with flames on the side, and we used to go up to, we'd go to the beach every day and play volleyball, sunset,

and go across the street to a Mexican restaurant, and then we would have tequila. Doesn't sound like starving, Pat. No, and then I got a call from the Lakers, and they hired me as the traveling secretary and color commentator, and I'm here today. Because of that, yeah. I wanna thank you for all your time. I appreciate over 30 years.

I cannot tell the audience enough about how supportive you've been. At every time I've made a move in my life professionally, Pat Riley has been there to either help me or support me or offer something in the way of wisdom or guidance. And I've treasured your trust for many years, even though you don't give me any information because it's the most... secretive organization anywhere in sports and and and i'd but i do value uh... that you would come over here and spend this time with us and if you want if you want to get me my clip that goes viral uh... they're calling you washed up old man they're saying the game has passed

him by he had to watch the celtics beat him last year and I imagine him shaking a fist at the television. What do you have to say to the critic who's out there saying that? Whoever's saying that, I haven't read it. I haven't read it because I'm not on any social media site, not one, so and I don't care because I've been, I've had my ass kicked by the Celtics enough when I was coaching and they're a great, great team. They put together a great organization, they put together a great team, they have broken all the records financially too, so they've committed themselves.

New York has gotten better and they're going for it. Philly's going for it. We're going for it too, we're going for it. We're going for it too. We're going for it. And this is an important year for the Heat. So I don't worry about what, you know, critics say because, you know, maybe I am. Maybe I should, you know, go somewhere and just sort of put my feet up. But I would then become very compulsive, obsessive about doing something else. And you don't want me in that state of mind. You're not going to be sedentary, right? There's

always, Pat Riley is going to be always driven, always looking for his inspirations. You write screenplays, you are looking for places to remain inspired. You know, maybe I will take that 600 page, by 17 written in pencil on legal yellow paper. I'll find that in storage and go back. I got a media company. I'm making movies now. They're not 600 page scripts.

It was nothing but verbal diarrhea when I quit, when I retired and I spent a year and a half just writing, just writing. And when I read it, it disgusts me about how I talked about, I don't even want to get into it, but it's not worthy of a book. But there's a lot of different thoughts in there that I might revisit one day. Were you wallowing? I won't push too much on this. Yeah, I was wallowing. You're disgusted by the man who was writing that, who needed

to get all his emotions out on paper? Yeah, no, I just wrote. That's what I do all the time. Every single one of my practice plans, game plans on blue card stock is dated, you know, then the very first line is emphasis for the day, message for the practice, practice plan, and then there would be in the message there might be only three points. I would only always talk about three things. Everything's in three. If you want to be great, you need work ethic, okay, you need to be competent, and you need to be truthful. Keep it simple.

Everything was three. So if I were to go back and think about something that would be really, you know, consequential for me if I was to ever retire, I wouldn't worry about sedentaryism. Is there a word like that? You wouldn't worry about being sedentary? Sedentary-nism. Okay, well you just made it up. Yes, just made it up. You wouldn't worry about that because you're never going to be puttering. You live life too big. I'm going to put my feet up. Definitely put my feet up and I'll have a Panolones. It's a tequila, you know. Okay, I thought you were only red wine these days No, I don't anymore. I got 3,000 bottles, but I don't drink it anymore

So I you know one little glass of tequila with a little olive juice in it and a little and I'll sit and I will Listen listen to No, I'm listening to Teddy swims. Okay. Yeah He wrote a great a, he's 31 years old, got a voice like, you know, Chris Stapleton, like, you know, like Post Malone, like Bruce. He's got the Michael McDonald voice, you know, and he just wrote an album called I've Done Everything But Therapy. You got to pick it up, you got to listen to it. And I got to see him in Colorado at Dillon Park. It's a small community up in the mountains, a 2,500-seat amphitheater. I went with my son-in-law, Paul, in Colorado. And it was this little amphitheater overlooking this lake is just a magical wonderful night and

And he came out on the stage and for you know two hours Captivated me, you know, I mean so those are the things that I'm gonna be doing if I ever retire I'll be chasing you've done everything except therapy. You've Except there. I tried it. It lasted five minutes. I walked in and Chris sent it up. I want you to go talk to this person in LA because my wife was a marriage family counselor so she used therapy. Maybe that's why we lasted 57 years. But I walked into her office. I sat down and the first question she asked me, tell me

about your father and I got up and walked out. Yeah, see there you go, he's done everything but therapy and he didn't do it here. I talked to you a lot about him over the years. I hope we get a chance to do it again Pat because I can't do it with you enough. So thank you for giving us the time. And congrats my man because you have gone through the stages of you of where you were and look at all this South Beach sessions. I love it. Yes, right across the street from you.

Thank you. Well, I know. The Heat organization flatters me when we're up in the televisions where people are working around there because, like I told you at the beginning of this, and it's sincere, you allowed me to build a little business next to your giant business at every... every Pat I don't know how many times you did it for me. I'm gonna give this to you. You got the gold pass, okay? Ira has the gold pass, Anthony has the gold pass. For being here a long time, for being here since the beginning? Tim Reynolds has the gold pass. Thank you. Guys that have been around forever.

Joe Rose, I don't get the talk on morning radio anymore, the gold pass. The people who saw you since you were at that hospital next to at the gymnasium next to the hospital. Yeah I think most of those men now are long gone but we're not there anymore. We're in this beautiful palace, this billion dollar piece of property called the Kaseya Center that somebody decided to put Pat Riley's court there. So I'm going to take it and have a good time. I'm going to tell the audience though that at every turn whenever I went to ESPN radio, whenever I had a big magazine piece to do, whenever it is that I needed a cameo on Highly Questionable where you

could come through and do funny things behind my dad. At every turn, I've never understood why it is you've helped me at every point in my career, but you've gone out of your way to do so, and I appreciate it because you didn't have to do that. It's because how you treated your dad, Poppy. You always had a soft spot for that. No, it's how you treated him,

how you took care of your father. I loved that. Thank you buddy. Thank you for everything. Family New Year's is this week. The holidays have been fun for the family. All eyes on New Year's turn over to 2025. From family gatherings to holiday parties with friends, this season is for enjoying time with the most important people in your life. Make the holidays even better with an ice cold Miller Lite. You can depend on Miller Lite to give you the same taste

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