The Life of Riley Not So Easy These Days

Pat Riley has started to run out of ways to describe his Miami Heat.

“Horrendous,” he said following an early loss.

“An absolute mess,” he said after a subsequent defeat.

“We’re not growing, we’re swelling,” he said last week.

“Horrendous,” he repeated after losing Wednesday at Washington.

So what happens when one of the NBA’s most articulate coaches begins to recycle words criticizing the team? Might Riley follow the example of his rival and protege, Jeff Van Gundy, and seek the nearest exit?

Van Gundy resigned last week as coach of the New York Knicks just 19 games into the season.

“He’s a lot like I am,” Riley said. “He cares so much and takes everything so personally and deeply that he wasn’t having any fun.”

Riley’s not having much fun, either. The Heat started 2-14 thanks to a 12-game losing streak, the longest of Riley’s 20-year coaching career. That left Miami with the league’s worst record, unfamiliar territory for a coach who has never missed the playoffs and has won four NBA championships.

“This has been very, very difficult for him,” said Hall of Fame coach Jack Ramsay, a former Heat broadcaster. “He has never had this experience, and it’s a painful process. But he’s a strong guy, and he’ll weather the storm and decide what he wants to do beyond this.”

Riley, greeted in every NBA city by a column speculating on his future, has been noncommittal beyond pledging to complete this season and saying that a bad one won’t dictate whether he retires or returns in 2002-03.

Riley, 56, has long seemed immune to the burnout that claimed Van Gundy and countless other coaches. He began this season with 1,049 victories, trailing only Lenny Wilkens (1,226), and achieved his success with a demanding practice regimen and long motivational speeches that are throwbacks to another era.

Although former players grouse about Riley’s intense style, it always produced a winning record until now. He’s admired by his peers for inspiring athletes with fragile egos and fat paychecks in a way few coaches can.

“He has been one of the great coaches of all time,” Ramsay said.

But recent seasons have worn on Riley. Each of the past four years, Miami was upset by a lower-seeded team in the playoffs, including three times in a row by the hated Knicks, his former team. And it appears the Heat still haven’t recovered from their stunning drubbing in the opening round against Charlotte last April.

Barely a year ago, Miami was touted as the best team in the Eastern Conference.

Then all-star center Alonzo Mourning was diagnosed with a kidney disease that forced him to miss the first 69 games last season and continues to zap his stamina and strength.

“Zo’s game is maybe 60 percent of what it has been,” Ramsay said. “He’s not playing up to his previous standard and may never again. And that’s a huge loss, because Riley’s game has always been focused on offense through the low post. That’s the only game he knows.”

Riley played with Wilt Chamberlain and coached Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Patrick Ewing before coming to Miami.

Now he has a team built around a center whose health is a constant concern and is under contract until 2003.

That’s hardly Riley’s fault, but dubious personnel decisions have left Mourning with a lackluster supporting cast.