THE NBA : Riley May Finally Get His Due

There is a distressing grass-roots campaign being waged to vote Pat Riley the NBA’s coach of the year. Something must be done to stop this gross injustice before Riley actually wins the award.

For 10 years, sportswriters have slighted the Laker coach in the voting for this honor. Popular opinion suggests that Riley be selected to atone for that. Jack McCallum, writing in Sports Illustrated last week, suggested that Riley should be given the “Irving Thalberg lifetime achievement award. Do it before he’s gone.”

Truth is, Riley has received far more acclaim for always losing out on the award, despite coaching consistent winners, than if he were to be named coach of the year.

“I don’t want it,” Riley said, laughing. “I’ve been given so much credit for not winning that I’d lose that mystique if I ever won it.”

Elsewhere, columnists lament the snub when the Lakers hit town for a game. Laker executives felt so bad for Riley that they scoured the wire services and learned that the Associated Press selected him its coach of the decade. Now, a banner proclaiming Riley as such hangs in the Forum.

Riley has converted this underrated-coach identity to his gain. In a perverse way, he likes the notoriety of never having won. At least, he admits no ego bruises.

Although those who follow the NBA know better, Riley laughingly recalls that he just rolled the balls out for practice when he took over the team in 1981-82. Riley likes to say that when Magic Johnson retires, he will retire, too, because the thought of coaching without Johnson is abhorrent.

In any event, media spite has not denied Riley the honor. There just seems to be an unwritten rule that coaches of teams with obvious talent are deleted from consideration.

Instead, the award has traditionally gone to the coach whose team has made a giant leap in the standings from the previous season. It is sort of a most-improved-team award.

“There should be two awards,” Riley suggested. “The coach with the most improved team and most successful coach.”

Since NBA players have higher profiles than the league’s coaches--the opposite is true in college basketball--sportswriters apparently need the shock of a big improvement to notice the coach.

Last season’s winner, for example, was Cotton Fitzsimmons of the Phoenix Suns. He was a worthy choice, certainly, since the Suns jumped from lottery oblivion in 1988 to the Western Conference finals in 1989, and Fitzsimmons had as much to do with it as Tom Chambers and Kevin Johnson.

Fitzsimmons graciously accepted the honor last season but wondered why Riley was not considered, even though the Lakers finished with a better record than the Suns.

Asked a few days ago to name his coach of the year this season, Fitzsimmons did not hesitate.

“Well, I’ll tell you this: It won’t be Pat Riley or (Detroit’s) Chuck Daly,” Fitzsimmons said. “It traditionally goes to the guys who made the biggest turnaround. So, I gotta go with one of two guys who’ve done great jobs--Jimmy Lynam or Rick Adelman.”

Both would seem deserving.

Lynam, a former Clipper coach, has taken a team whose only real additions were Rick Mahorn and Johnny Dawkins and completed an impressive turnaround. The 76ers won 46 games last season and were bounced from the playoffs in the first round. This season, Philadelphia already has won 49 games and leads the Atlantic Division.

Adelman, who expertly combined new talent--Buck Williams, Wayne Cooper and Cliff Robinson--with returning talent--Clyde Drexler and Terry Porter--has guided the Trail Blazers to the second-best record in the Western Conference. More important, perhaps, he has kept dissension out of the locker room, a common problem under former coach Mike Schuler.

Speaking of Schuler, he is a former coach of the year. Winning that award, though, is no assurance of future success. In fact, four of the last 10 winners--Schuler, Gene Shue, Jack McKinney and Frank Layden--no longer are head coaches, for one reason or another, and Mike Fratello, the winner in 1985-86, is rumored on his way out at Atlanta.

The last coach of an NBA champion to win the award--voted on at the conclusion of the regular season--was the Lakers’ Bill Sharman in 1971-72.

“I’d vote for Chuck Daly this season,” Riley lobbied. “I know what it’s like to coach a team after it won the championship. He had them winning 25 of 26 games until they got that injury to (Joe) Dumars. Who else has done that?”

Yet, Riley is one of the contenders this season. At the risk of appearing ungrateful, he said he knows exactly what he will do with the award.

“If I win it, I’ll turn around and give it to the coach of the most improved team, where (the award) belongs,” he said.

NBA Notes

Daly rumors: The Detroit News reported Sunday that a third party has contacted Chuck Daly to see if he is interested in becoming the general manager of the New Jersey Nets. Harry Weltman, the Nets’ general manager, is in the final season of his contract. Jack McCloskey, the Pistons’ general manager, said no one from the Nets has contacted him for permission to negotiate with Daly. Asked if he would give permission, McCloskey said, “Yes, but we’d ask that they’d wait until after the playoffs.”

Sources with the Pistons say Daly is tired of the daily grind of coaching, and that he would accept a job as TV commentator at NBC for next season’s coverage if it is offered. Should Daly leave, the leading candidate to replace him as coach would be Ron Rothstein, a former Piston assistant who is the head coach of the Miami Heat.

Coach Larry Brown of the San Antonio Spurs, forever unsure of what he wants, says the Spurs miss Maurice Cheeks’ leadership. Brown previously pushed for the trade that sent Cheeks to the New York Knicks for Rod Strickland, saying rookie David Robinson and Terry Cummings would fill the leadership role. After a recent losing streak, Brown lamented Cheeks’ loss. “You can’t expect the young kids to handle the pressure without help,” Brown said. “I knew this would happen when we traded Maurice Cheeks. It’s not in Terry Cummings’ nature to be a leader.”

Add Spurs: On March 31, former teammates Alvin Robertson and Willie Anderson were ejected for fighting during the only meeting of the Spurs and Milwaukee Bucks at San Antonio. Robertson, sent to the Bucks as part of the Cummings’ deal, pounded on the back door of the Spurs’ locker room at the Hemisfair Arena after being ejected and yelled, “I’m going to kick Willie Anderson’s butt. Open up the door.”

Before losing to Indiana on Sunday, the Knicks had won three consecutive games after benching point guard Mark Jackson for Cheeks and replacing small forward Johnny Newman with oft-injured Kiki Vandeweghe. Vandeweghe told the New York Daily News that he considered retirement because of a chronic bad back and nagging tendinitis in his feet. He missed 105 games over the last three seasons, but pronounced himself 70% recovered from the back and foot injuries. No longer, however, will Vandeweghe drive to the basket. Now, he shoots almost exclusively from the perimeter.

“The thing with an outside guy is, he’s out there to take the pressure off the inside guy,” Vandeweghe told the Daily News. “We’ve got a guy (Patrick Ewing) who can score on anyone.”

Assistant coaches Gary St. Jean and Mike Schuler will leave the Golden State Warriors temporarily to attended pre-draft college scouting camps. That leaves only Coach Don Nelson on the bench. Nelson said if he is ejected, forward Rod Higgins will coach the team.