Pat Riley remains unmatched in terms of winning.
Since making his on-court NBA debut with the Los Angeles Lakers in 1968, the 2008 Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame inductee has appeared in 19 NBA Finals over his career as a player, coach and front office executive, which rounds out to a wild 34 percent of the league’s all-time title-round series. Simply put: Riley knows winning (fair space to plug HBO’s legendary “Winning Time,” no?).
But even legends have a hard time assessing their next move.
On a recent episode of “The OGs” podcast hosted by Udonis Haslem and Mike Miller, the Miami Heat president articulated the balance he strikes when evaluating long-term roster-building choices with the immediate priority of winning. Miller asked the 2011 NBA Executive of the Year about the value of maintaining long-term windows of contention by rotating in new pieces for teams to stay sharp.
“I think players have to have that mentality themselves, with the exception of the very few who know they’re locked in,” Riley said. “A lot of the players are always sort of on the cusp of knowing or not knowing. I know that continuity and keeping the best players together for a long period of time and then adding something in to refreshen it — or to make it even better — is important. I never intended to try to make people feel uncomfortable by doing that. I just tried to — along with Erik (Spoelstra) and Andy (Elisberg), along with every one involved — see what piece can we add this year that can help them.”
Is it fair to wonder how that applies to this season’s Heat?
Following Monday’s 108-89 road loss to the Boston Celtics, Miami is again under .500 and struggling to weave together an identity game to game. Whether due to injuries, blown leads, inconsistent rebounding or struggling to overcome early holes, Miami is struggling to remain formidable in the Eastern Conference playoff picture. Granted, we’re still in the early days of December, but today’s NBA landscape has handcuffed team flexibility for refreshening or improving long-term cores due to the new collective bargaining agreement’s second apron.
Because the second apron effectively operates as a $188.9 million hard cap, spending a dime above it is not an option, so teams must get creative with maintaining top-end talent and thriving within the margins of rotating in complementary pieces in hopes of getting over the hump with a title. It partially explains why the Denver Nuggets, for example, had to accept the departures of Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and Bruce Brown after beating Miami in the 2023 finals. The defending champion Boston Celtics are anticipating a high luxury tax bill because maintaining their title-winning core proved that pricey … and the team remains on sale but is struggling to find a bidder.
According to Spotrac, the Heat rank seventh in the league in total apron allocations ($187.7 million), but the 4-14 Philadelphia 76ers ($182.7 million) are the only other team in the top 10 without a winning record entering Tuesday. Miami may not solve each layer of its undoing this season, but the team remains in sound hands as Riley continues gauging how to tweak around its margins. It’s understandable to be frustrated with how the Heat have performed so far, but Riley’s knack for masterfully scouting unheralded contributors is why Miami often overachieves to begin with. Despite the team’s slow start, the Heat enjoyed the NBA’s seventh-best win percentage in the previous five (.581).
This season, overachieving for the Heat may more closely resemble a Play-In berth than another championship for Riley, but that isn’t the same as this season being a failure. Some seasons can be sound bridges to a squad’s next window. The Heat have only five losing campaigns since 2000, so reasonable frustrations about this season could better reflect impatience for what could come next, not anything Riley or Miami haven’t shown expertise in navigating. And, while being in the NBA’s proverbial purgatory isn’t ideal, the Heat remain in sound hands for a retool even if the path toward it doesn’t feel good. Winning in the NBA is simply difficult even for legends such as Riley, who remains confident Bam Adebayo and Tyler Herro can be reasons the Heat maintain a high floor as their legendary leader assesses how to make another run, even if it might have to wait. Riley has been around the league for almost six decades, so it’s hard to discredit his team-building margins considering his enduring impact for maximizing just about any roster he’s overseen.
“That’s up to them. They’ve got six, seven years of experience,” Riley said of Adebayo and Herro as centerpieces. “They’ve learned from the veterans. It’s on them right now. I’m not trying to lay anything on them because it’s a team sport, but both of them have the ability to do different things — to do bigger things. But it all is going to come down to winning. And so, right now, they’re the guys — Jimmy Butler, Bam Adebayo, Tyler Herro, Terry Rozier — all the other guys that sort of come up behind them, you gotta put all this s— together. Put it together and get out there and win. I think they’re more than capable of it.”
(Top photo: Carmen Mandato / Getty Images )
