TURNING DOWN THE HEAT

Together again, or in each other’s sights, anyway . . .

It might not have been a rivalry that Phil Jackson and Pat Riley had in the ‘90s as the cobra and mongoose of the East, but it was long, loud and served as well as one.

Jackson had Michael Jordan in Chicago, so he got to be the mongoose. Riley had the New York Knicks and then the Miami Heat, obliging him to see how graciously he could accept the unacceptable.

To his credit, Riley took his lickings like a man, though the slings and arrows from his opposite number didn’t add to the experience. Finally, Riley even suggested to Jackson that they sit down and talk like two members of the same species, which cooled everything out.

Now Jackson is in the West, and whatever it is that renews today is more like basketball and less like a clash of political and cultural ideas, or a jihad.

Of course, a Laker-Heat finals might undo everything in a heartbeat, but for the moment, Phil and Pat actually can identify qualities the other has that they admire.

“We’re the same age,” Jackson notes. “We have a mutual respect for each other. We spent time together when we were players, like in Acapulco for player-rep stuff. There’s a certain amount of yukking it up we used to do.

“You know, Pat had a back surgery his first year [as a player]. I had one my second year. We kind of went through a lot of the things that had some similarity to them.

“I have great admiration for his attention to detail, his driving kind of authoritarian kind of dictatorship that he runs his teams with. And his motivational work that he does, it keeps people very busy and very driven.

“And this different style that I have can also be as successful and still have a different feel to it. . . .

“Yeah, I want to be more successful than Pat is, but I think it’s a wonderful matchup. I appreciate a lot of what Pat’s done for coaches. I’ve had coaches come over to me and thank me for the fact that I’ve helped our salary ability in the league by my stands, but Pat’s also a person that’s been able to do that.”

For his part, Riley says the rivalry was organizational, never personal, even if he understands how you could get confused.

“I mean, there was a rivalry between the Bulls and the Knicks, like the Hatfields and McCoys,” Riley says. “Just like the Heat and the Knicks now. I mean, there was a very, very contentious series, where nerves were frayed and things were said in the press more than anything else.

“I don’t have any problem with him. I think he’s a great coach and person. He’s the best thing that this thing [Lakers] has seen for years. I mean, it’s not a coincidence that all of a sudden their fortunes change from team to contender overnight.”

Well, it was fun while it lasted. Except for the participants, of course.

He Started It; No, He Started It

In 1992, George W. Bush’s dad was president and Bill Clinton was slogging through the Democratic primaries, tabloid scandal by tabloid scandal.

Jackson was in his third year as an NBA coach, already pursuing his second title. Riley was in his first season with the Knicks, having coached the Lakers to four titles.

The Bulls took special glee in torturing the heretofore disorganized Knicks. Jackson is a former Knick. Jordan loved to wow ‘em on Broadway. Before Riley, the Knicks were merely the stooges in their way.

That ended dramatically that spring when Riley pulled his first Knick team out of a late-season tailspin, surprised Detroit’s old Bad Boys in the first round, and almost did the same to the young Bulls in the second, in what turned into the NBA’s most exciting series of the ‘90s.

During the seven games it took for the Bulls to quell the uprising--the only time they’d have to go to seven games in their first five title runs--Jackson and Riley started going at it and the rivalry was born.

“The only thing that got me about Riley was he was always setting up situations,” Jackson says. “You’d come into a series and he’d start setting up about Michael and how he gets away with everything. I wasn’t in the press talking about how [Patrick] Ewing got away with his walks all the time and ran with the ball. . . . That irritated me that he tried to brainwash the news media and thus get to the referees or the league. So I tried to call him on that early and was doubly surprised by him then spinning one on my whining.

“So those spins that Riley was able to get on me, in my first kind of competition with him in ‘92, that really armed me. And from then on, I wasn’t going to give him any quarter. It became a rivalry then.”

The Knicks shocked the Bulls, winning Game 1 in Chicago, and almost took Game 2 as well before B.J. Armstrong, not Jordan, rescued his team with two clutch jump shots in the last minute.

In Game 3 at Madison Square Garden, Jackson and a Knick player on the floor snarled insults at each other. Then in Game 4, the Bulls were repulsed, Jackson was ejected and the series was even.

“I think they’re licking their chops on Fifth Avenue [league headquarters],” Jackson said afterward. “I don’t like orchestration; it sounds fishy, but they do control who sends the referees. If it goes seven games, everybody will be really happy. Everybody will get the TV ratings they want.”

The next morning, Riley read the comment in the middle of a New York press thicket with the cameras filming away. You could almost see him turning it over in his head, deciding how to use it.

“He’s insulting us, basically,” said Riley, finally. “I was part of six championship teams. I’ve been to the finals 13 times and I know what championship demeanor is all about. The fact that he’s whining and whimpering about the officiating is an insult to how hard our guys are playing. . . .

“What championship teams are all about, they’ve got to take on all comers. They don’t whine about it.”

For good measure, Knick President Dave Checketts protested Jackson’s comments to the league, which fined Jackson $2,500.

The Bulls then won Game 5 in Chicago, shooting 38 free throws, suggesting Jackson got his money’s worth.

Of course, it was just gamesmanship. Riley had taken it to new levels with the Showtime Lakers in the ‘80s but now had a rival who not only would fight him for every column inch in the papers, but acted as if he was affronted by Riley’s manly “game of force.”

Before they met in the ’93 Eastern Conference finals, Jackson showed the Bulls scenes from “The Power of One,” a movie about South African racial conflict, interspersing Knick footage with that of a jailer bashing a prisoner’s head against a wall.

The Knicks, who had finished three games ahead of the Bulls, took a 2-0 lead but lost in six, the series turning at the end of Game 5 when the Bulls blocked four Charles Smith attempts at the winning layup.

“Pat’s a tremendous opponent when it comes to a coach on the other side,” Jackson said that spring. “You feel his pressure when you coach and you know his teams are relentless. . . .

“He’s turned a group around and he’s got group dynamics going in a whole different value system--hard work ethic, maybe a little us-against-them. Like his players can’t talk to my players. His coaches can’t talk to my coaches. My style is open. I close my practices, as he does, but my style is open. Freedom with the basketball club, closed basketball team. . . .

“I need the league’s attention to what New York’s doing defensively. I need people to say, ‘Is this legal defense that’s being played on Scottie Pippen and Michael Jordan?’

“That’s all. I’m drawing attention to that. He knows it’s a psychological warfare. He’s big enough to know that.”

Sometimes it seemed hard to dismiss. Once, after Jackson charged he was out to hurt players and as an ex-player ought to know better, Riley told the press:

“That isn’t for you to be, I think, a special-delivery carrier of his messages to me and to have a comment from me. I think that when somebody begins to make personal attacks on people, then that’s up to you to decide whether or not . . . you know.”

Actually, reporters were delighted to deliver the messages, and so it continued.

“There were some barbs,” Riley says now, “but they were all basically for effect--begging the officials, pleading with the commissioner. I don’t think it ever got personal. We were the bullies and they were the artists.

“That’s the way it always was. He did his deal and I did mine.”

Give Peace a Chance

After that, Riley went to Miami, the Heat started making the playoffs regularly and the Bulls, now full-fledged dynasts, sent them home in the first round in ’96 and in the Eastern finals in ’97.

Meanwhile, back in New York, Jeff Van Gundy, Riley’s former assistant, had succeeded him. Van Gundy, who said he’d always resented Jackson’s charges against Riley, dubbed Phil “Big Chief Triangle” and a new rivalry was born.

By 1996, Jordan’s first season back, the league had cleaned up physical play. There was more enmity between Riley and the Knicks than between the Heat and Bulls, and Riley asked Jackson if he’d like to sit down and talk about things.

“He said, ‘Let’s get together this summer and talk,’ ” Jackson says. “That was an offer I didn’t take him up on because we’re on opposite sides of the country now. He’s in Miami and I’m in Montana in the summertime, so I didn’t pursue that and I had a busy summer that year.

“Pat’s all business when it comes to work. At the arena, he’s all business, he’s all closed off. But there’s a side to Pat that’s . . . “

Human?

It’s nice they discovered that about each other. Actually, Jackson is pretty businesslike at the arena, himself. Like Riley, he enjoys sending messages. Like Riley, Jackson isn’t one to hang out with other coaches, anyway. When the season ends, both disappear.

So check back in the postseason when organizations will clash and things will be said--for effect, of course--and everyone will have to be big enough to know that again.

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Top of Their Game

Comparison of Phil Jackson and Pat Riley’s statistics and where they rank among coaches with 400 wins:

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Jackson Category Riley 10 Years 18 593 Wins 984 204 Losses 425 .744 Winning% .698 111 Playoff Wins 149 41 Playoff Losses 93 .730 Playoff Winning% .616 6 Division titles 15 6 Conference titles 8 6 NBA titles 4

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Head to Head

Phil Jackson and Pat Riley’s victories against each other, broken down by teams coached and including playoffs:

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Jackson Riley 1 Bulls vs. Lakers 1 20 Bulls vs. Knicks 16 16 Bulls vs. Heat 5 PLAYOFF SERIES 2 Bulls vs. Knicks 1 2 Bulls vs. Heat 0

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