THE ROTTEN APPLE : Riley Learns a Core Truth as New York Fans Set the Fax Straight, and in Fewer Words

Gotham to Riles: Maybe you should have faxed this one in too.

Hell hath no wrath like the world’s greatest metropolis scorned, and it was to this spurned and angry place that Pat Riley was obliged to bring his new team, the Miami Heat, to play his old team, the New York Knicks, Tuesday night.

In a game overshadowed by the event, the Knicks buried the Heat, which was missing four starters, including Alonzo Mourning, 89-70.

In a gesture they had been saving since he faxed in his resignation last June, broke that “Core Covenant” he was always talking about and ran off without a word to them like one of the soul-less mercenaries in his speeches, Knick fans buried their once-beloved Riley.

They booed when his famous moussed head appeared in the hallway beneath the stands. They booed louder when he walked onto the floor, waved to them and blew them kisses.

Riley’s postgame press conference turned into a skirmish between minicam crews jockeying for position. At one point, a table which three cameramen had climbed onto collapsed as the combatants snarled at each other.

Said Riley, smiling one his few smiles in a week: “I miss New York.”

New York misses him too. New Yorkers had been waiting for this night since the NBA schedule came out. It was on their calendar, like a holiday.

Nov. 23--Thanksgiving.

Dec. 19--Heat’s first visit, payback for Riles.

Dec. 25--Christmas.

The New York Daily News ran a daily box with a caricature of Riley, counting down the days to the game--for two weeks. Each came with a “Pat Fact” such as: “Anyone hoping to get a sneak peek at the returning Riley might try Robert DeNiro’s Tribeca Grill (375 Greenwich St.) or the trendy Elaine’s (1703 2nd Ave.) after the game. . . . When Riley was one of us--a New Yorker--he frequented both places often.”

Knick players were asked about it for a week. How would the loss to Denver affect them for Riley’s return? Wasn’t it fortunate they beat Detroit so they wouldn’t face Riley with a losing streak?

Views were solicited from visiting celebrities such as Shaquille O’Neal (“I totally blame Riley for my broken thumb, not Matt Geiger.”) Reporters were dispatched to Miami, where Riley didn’t seem happy to see them.

“What are you wasting your time for?” he snapped at reporters from the New York Times and Newark Star Ledger in a rare lapse of his fabled poise that suggested how strung out he was.

“If I was your editor, I wouldn’t be wasting the thousand bucks. I’ll be up there Tuesday, OK? Write the same [thing] you wrote in July.”

Yankee owner George Steinbrenner was reportedly holding up his announcement he had re-signed David Cone until the Heat was out of town, and the Daily News’ back page wasn’t taken up with any more cartoons of a King Kong-sized Riley, dressed as a Miami Beach retiree in flowered shirt, shorts and calf-length black socks, advancing on Madison Square Garden.

Riley ducked the furor as best he could, holding the NBA’s first secret shoot-around Tuesday afternoon. But he had to take the walk some time, and when he appeared on the floor, the fans, whom he insisted he had never stopped loving, let him know they didn’t love him any more.

As the first boos rained down, Riley waved to the crowd and blew kisses. The boos got louder.

He walked to the middle of the floor like a heavyweight in the ring and waved to the crowd to bring it on. The crowed obliged.

“He came in like he was God, dancing and waving,” Knick forward Charles Oakley said. “That’s his ego.”

The game lived up to its second billing. The Knicks, tight as if this was Game 7 of the NBA finals after all the hype, didn’t score for 5:25. The Heat, without starters Mourning, Billy Owens, Kevin Willis and Sasha Danilovic, took a 9-0 lead. Unfortunately, they scored only 61 points the rest of the night.

Miami, which shot 30%, got 20 points from rookie Kurt Thomas. Patrick Ewing led New York with 18 points and 15 rebounds.

“I embrace whatever the fans had to offer,” Riley said later. “This is what I felt. This is what they felt. They’re totally different.

“I spent four years here. I think they know what I put into this, and we were very successful. I always embraced the fans of New York as some of the very best. If this is what they want to offer, I’ll just take it for what it is. I wanted to show my appreciation, regardless of what’s being said.”

What is it about this man that he can have entire cities bowing to him one moment, reviling his name the next?

How does a nice guy like Pat Riley keep getting himself into this position?

*

There really is a nice guy in there too, even if few get to see much of him these days and certainly no reporters, unless it’s someone like Pulitzer Prize winner David Halberstam, profiling him for some tony magazine.

Laker Pat still exists, the same likable guy who caddied for Jerry West, agreed with Chick Hearn, assisted Paul Westhead and ascribed his early success as a coach to two words: Magic and Johnson.

Of course, you couldn’t say he’s as unassuming as he was 10 years ago. It’s no longer about nurturing each other, as he used to say. It’s about his way, his maxims, his expectations.

Riley never understood what stardom did to him after the Lakers’ ‘87 and ’88 titles, or why his players turned on him. He was big, and they could remember when he was an overwhelmed beginner who had arrived on their doorstep like a foundling. He never lost the Laker fans, but after Jerry Buss invited Riley to leave in 1990, even his arch-defender, Johnson, said, “It wasn’t any two ways about it, it was one way. He had to go.”

Of course, Magic said that later.

Riley’s exit was gracious as gracious could be, even if the real story subsequently leaked and Riley chose to regard it as a betrayal by players and an attack by the press.

He then proceeded to turn it up even higher in New York, where he openly challenged players and toyed with the press, which he called “the animal that has to be fed every day.”

Not that New York minded--as long as he won.

He took a 39-win, written-off troupe to 60 victories in two seasons, to Game 7 of the finals in three. If John Starks had made that last three-point basket in Game 6 in Houston in 1994 (or better yet, as Riley said after watching the replay 1,000 times, if he had passed to Ewing heading for the hoop), it might be Riley Square Garden now.

Last season turned into a nightmare: Ewing limping, Starks unable to regain pre-knee surgery form, O’Neal and the young Magic passing them by, Riley railing that his players were “unprofessional,” Michael Jordan returning, the Pacers ousting the Knicks in the second round of the playoffs.

Then the bombshell: Riley faxed in his resignation, blamed it on differences with his friend and boss, Madison Square Garden President Dave Checketts--in a printed statement--then flew to Europe and holed up for a month.

New York turned on him as fast as it took the boys at the Daily News and the New York Post to tap out such headlines as “RILEY THE RAT,” “THE QUITTER” and “THE LIES OF RILEY.”

Riley says he didn’t leave because of money but acknowledges giving the Knicks an astronomical figure to keep him: five years at $25 million, the presidency and part ownership. He says Checketts stalled him on the title--Checketts wound up keeping it for himself, even after becoming president of MSG--but promised to let him go if Riley kept quiet about their differences during the Garden’s pending sale.

Riley’s broadside obliged Checketts to fire back. The Knicks alleged tampering by Miami.

An NBA hearing turned up a fax listing Riley’s demands, sent to the Heat by Riley’s friend, businessman Dick Butera of Aspen, Colo., while Riley was still under contract.

Worse, the Garden leaked a story that Heat telephone records showed Butera had been in contact with Miami officials since February. The NBA found for the Knicks, fining the Heat $1 million and a No. 1 pick.

“You know,” Riley said, relatively relaxed during last week’s swing through Los Angeles, “all things being equal, I’d probably still be coaching the Knicks.

“I mean, if the opportunity was presented there that I thought I could work with--if I was going to dedicate five more years of my life to coaching, then I wanted it at least on my terms, OK? Period.

“I was gonna put that in there. I think I earned that. And obviously, we couldn’t get to those terms. . . .

“I could not have made the deal that I made in Miami in New York. I could not have made the Alonzo Mourning deal in New York, not with the way it was run.”

The Garden was, indeed, a hotbed of infighting as Viacom acquired Paramount and then spun off the Garden to ITT. But there was a another reason the Knicks couldn’t trade for Mourning, no matter how they were set up: Their players were too old.

The Hornets turned down Checketts’ offer of Charles Oakley, 32, and Charles Smith, 30. Riley, pursuing his own trade, reportedly ripped his old players to the Hornets, enraging Knick management all over.

The Knicks are not only aging but, for the moment, out of moves. Ewing is getting $18 million this season, Smith $3.8 million. Oakley has a $10-million balloon payment due in 1997-98 when he will be 34. No. 1 draft picks went for veterans Derek Harper and Rolando Blackman.

Miami’s offer to Riley made the Knicks look like ragpickers. Riley, a poor boy who had already attained riches he never dreamed of, found himself looking at El Dorado--a contract worth at least $40 million, plus an invitation to move upstairs and run, as well as co-own, the club if he tires of coaching.

Or he could have stayed for the Knicks’ $3-million offer, in New York where he later admitted he was miserable, and tried to get past Michael, Shaq, the Pacers, the Daily News and the Post.

He left. New York exploded. Only he could have been surprised.

“I have a tremendous amount of resolve when it comes to that,” Riley says. “I have a life to live, a family to raise. I ain’t gonna let that get me down.”

Actually, friends say the reaction got him where he lived. He called it the first “taint” on an unblemished image.

In the future, he’ll hide it better. Like the rest of his hurts, it will be his and his alone.

*

No coach ever got a contract like the one the Heat gave Riley.

--Five years at $3 million, for $15 million, guaranteed.

--A 10% stake in the Heat after five years. Assuming the franchise is worth $125 million, that’s another $12.5 million.

--An additional 10% in 10 years for a total of 20%.

Even if he works without salary the last five years and the Heat’s value doesn’t appreciate, that’s $40 million. Add to that a $300 per diem for personal expenses--$80,000 more a year--and what could a poor boy say but, “Where do I sign?”

He signed in the Dynasty Lounge aboard a Carnival Cruise Line ship that belongs to the Heat’s new owner, Mickey Arison, a man who is not merely wealthy but fabulously so and eager to buy credibility for a team that lost 50 games last season.

The team that went 32-50 in 1994-95 zoomed to an 11-3 start, but injuries hit the roster Riley stripped in the Mourning trade. Mourning and the rest are due back soon but it remains to be seen whether Riley gave up too much.

He can get $7 million under the salary cap next summer by letting Willis go--but then he will have to find another power forward. If he gives Mourning his annual $13 million, the Heat will be over the cap for the rest of the century. Riley, a sprinter all his career, is starting on his first marathon.

Not that everyone is rooting for him.

“I predict Pat Riley will make Mickey Arison a millionaire,” a Forum official said recently. “Of course, right now Mickey’s a billionaire.”

Riley will give Arison a run for his money. Whether he can build a franchise without burning it out--and himself--also remains to be seen.

“Having to win a championship every single year versus having to turn a franchise around,” he muses. “I mean, what’s the difference?

“The challenge of having to win every year in L.A., or even in New York, how much different is that than turning a franchise around?”

For him, there’s little difference.

He’s still running the toughest practices and pouring his heart into games. He recently lamented in Esquire magazine that his daughter, Elisabeth, seemed to have turned 7 overnight. The same day he called home to ask her if it was all right to miss her birthday dinner because of business.

When the Heat won its last game in Phoenix, finishing without the injured Mourning, Riley called it “one of the great wins I’ve been associated with.”

Two games later, both blowout losses, he said he sometimes catches himself wondering if they will ever win again.

Whatever happens, it will be an adventure for Miami. Riles has a new city in the palm of his hand, another core, another covenant.