Riley and the Knicks Would Be Perfect Fit

It looks more and more as though Pat Riley will soon become the New York Knicks’ sixth coach since 1985. The club, owned by Paramount Communications, will dip into its considerable financial resources and pay the former Los Angeles Lakers’ coach around $5 million over five seasons.

Riley, a proven winner with a high profile, has spoken on the phone with club President Dave Checketts, but has not yet undergone a formal interview, according to Checketts. The president said he and vice president of player personnel Ernie Grunfeld interviewed one candidate this week and plan to interview four more, including Riley, next week.

Checketts said he was not comfortable talking about Riley Thursday because he does not want to scare off the other prospects. “They are saying they are interested, but they are not interested in having their names put out if they have no shot at the job,” Checketts said. “I can tell you (Riley’s) a candidate. It just so happens he’s a high-profile candidate.”

There are several interesting reasons for Riley’s success in L.A. and why he’d fit well with the Knicks:

The Showtime Factor: The mere notion of Riley pacing the Madison Square Garden sideline in front of the Knicks’ bench in his Armani suits, with his hair slicked back, is compelling. And don’t think for a minute that Paramount president Stanley Jaffe, a Hollywood type, was not impressed with the glitz of the Lakers of the 1980s.

Riley was as much a part of that aura as Magic Johnson or James Worthy or Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. In fact, Riley elevated the fast-breaking style into a championship-level system for eight years. Riley’s Lakers were exciting and very good, a combination that made Los Angeles the envy of the league -- and four-time titlists -- in the 1980s. He’d make the Knicks Showtime East.

“There are two things that Pat would bring to the Knicks,” said Dave Wohl, a Riley assistant for three years who is now a candidate for the vacant Heat head-coaching position. “One, he brings instant credibility. He brings (championship) rings on his fingers to a place where the players do not have them. He can show them, ‘This is how it’s done.’

“Two, he has a great understanding of the running game. And when the Knicks were playing well a few years ago, they were more of an up-tempo team. Pat’s a big fan of aggressive basketball. He’ll make the Knicks run again effectively.”

The Magic Factor: The curse of coaching the Lakers was that there was so much talent -- the game’s best point guard (Magic), the game’s best big man (Abdul-Jabbar) and a premier forward (Worthy), among others -- that often the widespread thinking was that anybody could win with that group.

That notion drew a laugh from Jerry West, the Lakers’ general manager who worked with Riley for seven years. “Pat didn’t have very many weaknesses as a coach. It helped him a great deal that he had two truly consummate professionals in Abdul-Jabbar and Magic. (But) because he’s such a hard and dedicated worker, they developed great respect for him.”

Added Wohl: “One of the mistakes in judging Pat was that because he had Magic and Kareem and Worthy, he could just throw the ball out there and let them play. But Pat was one of the most prepared coaches I’ve ever been around. Every little detail he took care of. He’s very meticulous, very demanding.”

There has been talk that Riley’s ego is considerable and that he’d take the Knicks’ job simply because he believes he could rescue the team. However, Wohl said Riley’s ego was not so big that it got in the way. In fact, Riley’s ego was pivotal in the Lakers’ success, Wohl said.

“Pat had to run a fine line of showing the world he’s a great coach and killing them with Xs and Os or not overcoaching and showing the way by letting them play,” Wohl said. “He could have easily said, ‘This is Pat Riley’s team and I’m leading them,’ which probably was a temptation. I know it was frustrating for him sometimes, but he did what was best for the team. I’ll always give him a lot of credit for that.”

The Motivation Factor: After the Lakers won the 1986-87 championship by beating the Boston Celtics in the finals, Riley guaranteed during a celebration in Los Angeles that his club would repeat as champs the following season. It was probably his greatest tactic at charging a team that had reached the pinnacle but needed a jump-start to reach its potential the next season.

“Riles pushed us. We all thought it was crazy for him to say it at the time, but during that season his guarantee kept us focused,” Worthy said. “It was a great move. And nobody could really see that it was at the time, except Riles.”

Riley would have a serious chore in dealing with the Knicks, a group of players who at times seem uninterested in the game. Many times in the last few seasons, coaches Stu Jackson and John MacLeod talked of getting a better effort from the players. That’s something Riley has never accepted.

“If there are any players on the Knicks unwilling to make the sacrifice to be successful, he’s going to go with other players,” Wohl said. “He’s a very competitive coach and he translates that competitiveness to his team.”

To which West added, “Pat was a hard-working, intense kind of guy. His dedication and motivation helped get him to the top of the heap very fast. Having been a player, his hard work and ability to understand were plusses.”

But the fact that Riley was with the same group of Lakers for eight years turned out to be his downfall, as he may have worked them too hard the last two seasons. In essence, Riley cracked the whip hard, and the players, feeling Riley was driving them too hard, soured on him.

When the Lakers were knocked out of the playoffs by the Suns last season, after an outstanding regular season, the mumbling by players got louder. And Riley, citing a desire to get into “other things,” took the job with NBC as a studio analyst.

“The longer you’re with a quality team, the more you have to find ways to motivate,” Wohl said. “He went out on sort of a sour note. But as the years go on, it’s harder to motivate the same group of players who’ve reached the top. They’ve heard all the halftime talks and all your motivation tactics. So I think that was a big factor in his leaving the Lakers.”

And it could be a big factor why he’d return to coach the Knicks. There are new players who present a new challenge. New York is not Hollywood, but it is the media capital and the country’s largest city. Patrick Ewing, for now, is in the middle, which means there is a strong starting point. And the money would make Riley the highest-paid coach in NBA history.

“Will he take it?” Wohl said. “Let’s just say I think he still has the fire to coach. And New York would be a great situation for him.”