Miami Breach

It’s still a tale of two cities, this one and their old one.

See if this sounds familiar:

Life couldn’t have been better for Shaquille O’Neal, who spent last summer fighting crime -- literally -- tailing a man who’d thrown a bottle at a gay couple, flagging down a policeman to make the arrest, while his team stocked up on All-Stars.

Shaq and his right-hand man, Dwyane Wade this time around, were already the game’s most devastating tandem. The media anointed them runaway favorites in their conference. Their fans were giddy and then just when it looked as if things couldn’t get any better ...

The season started.

Everything promptly unraveled, obliging Pat Riley to become the coach, whereupon the team began to look like the juggernaut it was supposed to be.

Of course, it remains to be seen if everyone lives happily ever after and besides, as Riley and O’Neal could tell you, it’s not like that in real life.

Laker fans may recognize the coincidence of this season’s plot line with those of O’Neal’s farewell in 2003-04 and Riley’s debut as coach in 1981-82, but that was then. They’re a long way from Los Angeles today as they continue their partnership before a national audience against -- who else? -- the Lakers.

Yes, it’s another Christmas with Shaq and Kobe Bryant, with Riley and his old archrival, Phil Jackson, thrown in for good measure. Showing who’s who, attraction-wise, last spring’s finalists, the San Antonio Spurs and Detroit Pistons, are the warmup act in ABC’s twin bill.

Riley’s return may be controversial, but to a league that prospered with personalities known by their first names -- Magic, Larry, Michael -- it’s the answer to a commissioner’s prayer.

O’Neal, Riley, Bryant and Jackson are to the NBA what Marilyn Monroe and Clark Gable were to the old Hollywood, the last in the line of the stars who ushered the league into its golden age in the ‘80s and its zenith in the ‘90s, splashy personalities who lived to perform on court and off, as opposed to today’s commercially minted stars like LeBron James, who are subdued in real life.

Happily for the league, the Heat is rising again. O’Neal, still the NBA’s answer to Peter Pan, is back to trying to dunk on everyone’s head, reinvigorated by Riley’s return ... which Shaq, who’d just returned after sitting out five weeks because of an ankle injury, might well have helped bring about behind the scenes.

“I was getting ready to say he’s matured some,” says Atlanta broadcaster Dennis Scott, O’Neal’s friend and former teammate, “but it depends on what kind of a conversation you’re having, because he’s still a practical jokester.”

It’s not the same Riley. At 60, he has the same flat stomach, but there’s gray at the temples of the famous mane Michael Douglas copied to play Gordon Gekko in “Wall Street.” Coming off a two-year sabbatical that gave Riley time to reflect, he even laughs at himself, musing, “I haven’t won in 17 years, so I’d better think about some adjustments, you know?”

Actually, he took the New York Knicks to within one game of a title and the Heat to the Eastern finals but he never had a roster like the one he put together and just took over. The last team Riley had that was this good wore purple and gold.

In any incarnation, he’s back, and for O’Neal and the Heat, not to mention the league, it’s not a moment too soon.

The Shaq That

Stirs the Drink

Of course, there’s the matter of how Riley got here, replacing his coach and longtime faithful assistant, Stan Van Gundy, amid widespread skepticism that he forced Van Gundy out.

Indeed, Riley seemed to telegraph the events last summer, when he said he’d take a “more active participation.”

However, this ignores the O’Neal factor, despite suggestions that Shaq wasn’t happy with Van Gundy; Shaq’s discreet silence between Game 7 of the Eastern finals and Van Gundy’s resignation; Shaq’s turnaround under Riley; and Shaq’s indiscreet comment -- despite Riley’s injunction against players’ zinging their old coach -- that “it’s a different locker room. Guys are listening.”

No one knows whether O’Neal exerted any influence, subtly, deniably or not. However, no one knew the part he played in Jackson’s hiring in 1999 until the next spring, when O’Neal revealed he had recommended him when the Lakers were getting ready to rehire Kurt Rambis.

Not coincidentally, that was the season O’Neal, playing with a never-seen-before-or-since determination, missed becoming the first unanimous most valuable player by one vote.

In similar fashion, he’s now going all-out, averaging 21 points in 27 minutes for Riley, compared with 13 in 27 under Van Gundy. He suffered a sprained ankle in the Heat’s second game and sat out the next 18, returning the day before Van Gundy resigned.

At 33, six years older than the Shaq of ‘99, he needs Riley even more than he may have thought he did. Only Riley could raise the taboo subject of O’Neal’s weight, saying he’s in the 330s -- it must be the high 330s -- and needs to drop into the 320s.

Riley used to be known for his grinding three-hour practices, which is why Magic Johnson said, “They all should have hoped that Van Gundy stayed. That’s for real. It’s a new day, starting tomorrow at practice. Trust me.”

On the other hand, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was 34 when Riley became coach and played eight more seasons, helping the Lakers win consecutive titles in 1987 and 1988 before retiring in 1989.

“I think Kareem was a great leader, from the standpoint of setting an example,” Riley says. “He came to practice every day expecting to practice. He never sent the trainer or somebody up to me to say, you know, he’s a little sore....

“And I think it was Earvin who came to me one day when I was younger and said, ‘Look, let’s back off on the big guy.’ I mean, we were running around there two or three hours.

“And as long as it’s OK for the other guys to maintain a double standard -- not a double standard but to maintain our most powerful asset. ... They know that Shaquille is 33 and he’s been off for [18] games of being hurt and they don’t want me to break him. They want him ready, ready, ready and healthy.”

Riley’s return meant O’Neal’s return. Before that, the ball didn’t go into the post as often ... but then O’Neal didn’t always demand it or make as strong a move when he got it as he does now.

“I mean, let’s be truthful about it,” Riley says. “Dwyane is a great, great, great, great performer and I don’t think it’s going to bother him if I say this.

“[Laughing] Oh my God, if I say this is Shaq’s team, will I create a problem?”

Said a pleased O’Neal: “It’s my job to make [Wade] look good. He’s a very good-looking man, so it’s my job to keep him looking good.”

Showing how perfect this situation is for O’Neal, when the lower-than-low-key Wade was asked about it, he answered in all sincerity, “Why not?”

The Heat had been in the process of becoming Wade’s team, but Miami never stopped being O’Neal’s town. Despite its hot image, the celebs clubbing in South Beach don’t all stop off at American Airlines Arena and you might have found more movie stars at a Clipper game in 1988. In this firmament, O’Neal isn’t a star among stars but the sun in their solar system.

O’Neal’s image is built on charm, not accessibility, so few media people who aren’t from a sponsoring network get him. On the other hand, Shaq has perfected the art of saying nothing in an amusing way, so although you might miss a laugh or two, actual information is another matter.

The key has always been O’Neal’s tone -- which is now as cheerful as the first robin of spring, as when he dismisses Jerry Buss’ comments about trading him -- “He misses me. It’s like an old girlfriend. If you break up with me, you feel it more than I do” -- which wasn’t so funny when it happened.

Says Scott: “I think early on, his biggest thing was, ‘I’m not getting credit because I’m young.’ And then it was, ‘I’m not getting any credit because I haven’t won any rings.’

“So now it’s like he’s finally gotten a lot of these criticisms out of the way. The free-throw thing, he says they can have that. Certain days he makes them, certain days he doesn’t.”

As a Laker, O’Neal was the sensitive half of the Shaq-Kobe tandem, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that being sent away hurt more than O’Neal has ever acknowledged.

“The reason it doesn’t hurt more than it does,” Scott says, “he understands the business aspects of him being the older guy and Kobe being the younger guy, he said.

“But how it went down -- that’s what hurts the most. Because he felt like he put the Lakers back on top by him coming out there. He said, ‘If I don’t listen to Leonard Armato [then his agent] and say, “No, I want to stay in Orlando,” the Lakers still might not be winning.’ ”

As the Lakers opened a new vista for O’Neal in 1996, so the Heat does now. Once he was criticized so much, there was a name for it -- Shaq bashing -- but it’s different now.

It’s good to be a beloved institution.

Regrets, He Has

a Few (Dozen)

When Riley said it was Shaq’s team at a postgame news conference last week, he actually glanced over at publicist Tim Donovan when he asked if it was OK to say that.

Yes, said Donovan, who wasn’t used to having Riley clear his comments with him, it was OK.

It’s a weird time for Riley, all but sunburned by the firestorm of criticism, back doing something he loves, more relaxed at it than he has ever been, with the team he has waited all his post-Laker career for, even as he protests he doesn’t want to be there.

It’s a cruel irony -- Riley, who always cared so much, pictured as not caring at all. Even Laker officials who shudder at the memory of his final days when they called him “Norman Bates” don’t question his sense of loyalty.

Riley says he thought his comment about being more involved was a passing thought, as opposed to announcing a new direction. Indeed, it took weeks for him to understand that he had to explain it. Even then, he was so insulted at the universal inference, he told beat writers asking if Van Gundy would return that it was “a loaded question.”

Six months later, despite suggestions that the players were awaiting further developments, with Van Gundy and owner Micky Arison having long since concluded this wouldn’t fly, Riley was still trying to get his coach to stay.

Showing how much the ensuing criticism stung, when former Heat guard Damon Jones, now in Cleveland, said Van Gundy had been “set up,” Riley went off, calling it “a ... damn lie.”

“It just makes me say sort of, so what?” Riley said last week. “So what? So whatever happens happens and whatever is written and said happens and I’m going to go home and enjoy whatever quality of life I have left, OK?

“I love the game and all the things that come directly from the players to me and me to them. Last night we had the Christmas party at my house, and it felt real good to have them in my home. And so all that other stuff about things on the outside that I think are distasteful doesn’t bother me.”

Actually, despite his cool image and man’s man bearing, Riley always led with his heart. His notion of the Showtime Lakers as a family wasn’t just a handy unifying technique, he fervently believed it. The few, inevitable comments after he left wounded him to his core. It took two years before he could concede in an interview with Bob Costas that it had ended badly.

(In the way of things, Byron Scott, who’d said Riley’s departure was “like a resurrection,” would later cite him as his primary influence when he became a coach and their relationship would go back to what it had been.)

Adding to the irony, this is no longer the old driven Riley. In 2003 when he resigned as coach, he savaged himself as a failure on his way out.

“What is Stan following?” he asked the Miami Herald’s Dan Le Batard. “A name, that’s all.”

However, Riley learned there was life outside coaching. He enjoyed it, as in the story he tells about making plans to go to the Caribbean to scout, General Manager Randy Pfund said there were no teams there and he replied, “There’s a team down there somewhere.”

Friends always thought Riley would feel the urge to return -- the Lakers approached him in 2004, surely at Johnson’s suggestion, before hiring Rudy Tomjanovich -- but it may never be as all-consuming for Riley as it used to be.

“I spent 20 years in angst all the time,” he says. “I was always not good enough, got to do more, work, work, work, worry. ...

“The thing in New York [negotiating with the Heat through a friend while coaching the Knicks, subsequently faxing in his resignation] was downright ugly at the end and it was my fault. There’s no doubt about it, it was my fault and I take total responsibility for that and I got what I deserved from the media.”

Perhaps not everything, with the New York papers counting down the days to his first game back and one of them running a daily logo that said: “The Return of Pat the Rat.”

Riley’s passion always aroused passion in everyone else, in his players who did anything to avoid the hell he turned their lives into when they lost; in the press, which he alternately entertained, exploited and dismissed as the leading “peripheral opponent” and “the beast that has to be fed every day.”

Now it’s ... Pat the Nice?

“I’ve got another skin to me and everybody knows that,” he says. “The players know that. There’s another side to me and I can change, like, overnight.

“But I hope it doesn’t. I hope I really don’t get to that point, because it’s not a good side. So I think I can accomplish the same things without the hurt and the insulting and all the things I used to do to try to get players to do things they don’t want to do in order to achieve what it is you want.”

Just the same, his new players had better not do anything to upset him, such as losing two in a row. This is still Pat Riley, after all.

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

How they compare

The Lakers (15-11) enter today’s game with a better record than Miami (15-12). Comparing the Lakers’ and Heat’s team statistics and where they rank in the NBA:

*--* LAKERS HEAT AVG. RANK AVG. RANK PPG 96.7 14 97.7 12 FG% 443 18 458 9 FT% 732 18 711 26 3-pt.% 336 23 362 12 Reb. 42.1 12 43.3 5 Assists 20.3 15 19.9 18 Steals 7.2 13 6.1 26 Turnovers 14.1 9 14.6 18

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