MIAMI — As he prepared for Wednesday night’s dedication of the court at Kaseya Center in his honor, Pat Riley was asked about these 30 years with the Miami Heat, an era that has come to define him as much as his time as coach of the Showtime Lakers and even more than his time as coach of the New York Knicks.
The conversation last week in his office alongside Biscayne Bay took Riley back to a moment in October 2003, when he thought, at that juncture, he might have been at the finish line of this Heat journey.
It was then — after nearly a decade of making the Heat matter, of building playoff rosters with Alonzo Mourning, Tim Hardaway, Jamal Mashburn, P.J. Brown, Dan Majerle and others, but also of brutal playoff losses to the Knicks — Riley cited Forrest Gump, and spoke of the scene where the movie’s protagonist, after years of running endlessly back and forth across the country, simply stopped and said, “I’m pretty tired. I think I’ll go home now.”
“I couldn’t take it,” Riley reflected last week. “I’d gotten to the point of absolute burnout, and a real darkness at that time. I just did.
“That was hard. It really took a toll on me. I coached hard for a long time. And I sacrificed a lot. And I didn’t even know what I was sacrificing, when I was sacrificing the most important things in my life. And it just looked natural. We all travel, and miss our kids. We miss all that stuff. And so that is when I had my Forrest Gump moment and I thought it was over then.”
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at the new signature on our hardwood pic.twitter.com/aWrIQ6j5VC
— Miami HEAT (@MiamiHEAT) October 22, 2024
It wasn’t. A return to coaching would come just over two years later. Three Heat championships would follow, including one as coach. And the work in the front office, in his role as team president, remained unceasing, putting together Heat rosters featuring the likes of Shaquille O’Neal, Dwyane Wade, LeBron James, Chris Bosh and, most recently, Jimmy Butler.
Now, at 79, Riley is still running, 30 years into this Heat tenure, preparing yet again, this time for Wednesday night’s season opener against the visiting Orlando Magic.
But also preparing for the night’s formal dedication of “Pat Riley Court at Kaseya Center.”
Typically for Riley, in his own words, the main thing is the main thing.
But in the wake of owner Micky Arison announcing the court honor for Riley, Wednesday will be a night about more than the score, as the franchise opens its 37th season.
It will be about a unique, distinctive honor.
And, for Riley, it will be about a humility that time, age and wisdom have crafted and refined.
Previously, he admitted, he would not allow or take the time for such exhales, as he does now.
“I look at 30 years in terms of how fast things have happened, how quickly my family has grown and moved on. I have grandchildren,” he says. “And the thing I love the most of the 30 years are all the people who are the familiar faces every day that come in here.
“I almost want to apologize to everybody in the organization for me not talking to people on days. I was rather intense, maybe a little too stressed, whatever it is. I used to walk down these stairs here and wouldn’t say a word to anybody, whether we won or lost, because my mind was focused, was I had to get to my desk and start working on a practice plan.”
Those are the moments when longtime personal assistant Karen Merrill would appreciate the moment, with so many of such moments in both what now is Kaseya Center and what once was Miami Arena.
“Karen was great, ‘Coffee or tea?’ ” Riley says, with a reflective smile. “I might not say anything, but she’d put something on my desk. And to have people like that in the organization that I’ve known really intimately — we’ve had a lot of fun, they’ve had a lot of joy, there’s been a lot of misery on this floor at times, too, because we all want to win, too.”
For three decades a stamp on a franchise.
And now, starting Wednesday night, a signature on the court.
And also now, still running, life in many ways like his own box of chocolates, in his case the Ghirardelli stashed in his executive suite.
“The 30 years, it goes fast,” he says. “And I didn’t realize just how fast it goes. And it seems like it’s going faster every day. But it’s been a blessing for me.”
So, no, no finish line in sight. At least not just yet.
“No idea,” he says when asked about the retirement he thought already would have come when he had made those plans years ago to settle back down in Malibu. “And I think that’s the greatest thing about it, is others have asked this question, ‘How long?’ I get it. And so I said to Micky the other day, ‘Is this your message? Are you giving me this honor to get me out of here?’
I said, ‘We can still wait a couple of years.’ And he laughed.”
