Pat Riley Won't Leave the Miami Heat Willingly

Pat Riley, uh, giving his annual State of the Heat.

I used to work down in Miami.

I, this was always a great day.

It's something.

Uh, this one went for about an hour down in, uh, in Miami.

Uh, we've got a clip of some of that from Pat Riley.

I'm not gonna retire.

I'm not going to resign.

I'm not gonna step aside.

You know, uh, When I came here You know, almost 31 years ago .

Uh I have the same.

Um, Attitude As I had in that press conference on the imagination, period.

You know, I want another parade down Biscayne Boulevard.

It may come, it may not, whatever, but it's always been my desire is to win, is to win big.

All right, so, well, there is Pat Riley, uh, saying that he plans to be around for a very long time.

He also said that, Amidst the reporting that he's no longer in charge down there, he basically said he was never really in charge, which I don't think that's true.

I think when he first sent that fax to, to quit the Knicks and went down to South Beach, I'm pretty sure he had complete control of that.

organization, I will say again, having worked down there, he has always deferred to Mickey Harrison, and now it is Nick Harrison, but that he, There was a, even at his height of Pat Rileys when he was both running the team and coaching the team and all this stuff and winning the unexpected 2006 title or whatever it was, he would always say, well, Mr.

Harrison's in charge.

So this may be a callback to that, but he is less in charge now than he was before.

Is that what we can say?

I guess, but like, So for people that that don't know the heat structure down there, like they've got like 4 people that are in meetings .

It's Pat Riley, it's Nick Harrison, it's Andy Ellsberg, and it's Erik Spoelstra.

Andy Ellsberg is the name the fewest people know, and he is the secret genius behind every good run the Heat have had.

He is phenomenal, integral, intricate to what they do down there , um.

Has the power dynamic shifted the way it's been suggested?

Maybe Nick Harrison's getting older.

He's clearly asserting more control within the organization.

I do think it's false for Pat to say that I was, I always answered to somebody.

Yeah, like maybe, of course, everybody answers to somebody because there's an owner that has to sign off on everything because everything has a financial cost.

But over the years, I'm, I feel pretty confident saying that Mickey Arison went along with most of the things that Pat Riley suggested.

It seemed like, This is all the way the Heat have, uh, done their business has always been a reflection of Pat Riley, and you hear that like Erik Spoelstra, this is how Pat, this is how Riley wants to do things.

This is how we want to do that.

We don't tank.

We just keep trying to win.

But that's a good thing, right?

I mean, that whole demeanor, that heat culture, not only has it been successful, fans love it, right?

Players who fit into it, love it.

It has made that team distinct.

It is probably necessary when you play, you know, 4 miles away from South Beach.

Like you, you need to have.

That sort of discipline and doggedness and all of the things.

For me, the takeaway from that press conference was less the, I'm going to be here till I die, sort of, quote, and more of him sort of discussing the team's performance, because we don't normally hear this from front office people.

He said, quote, I'm really pissed.

I'm disappointed, disgruntled, just like everyone else in the organization that knows what we're about.

The last 3 or 4 years, with the exception of 2023, has been something I'm not proud of.

That is interesting to me.

Yeah.

Yeah, um, They are going to be a major player for Giannis this summer.

Um, they have been telegraphing that.

They made a run before the deadline.

They're gonna make another run now.

I, I don't know.

Does getting Giannis on that team move the needle that much?

I mean, I guess you gotta Tyler Hero team would you like to go to.

I mean, Giannis is focused on winning.

I, I do believe that.

I, yeah, I, and I don't think Miami gives you the best chance to win.

Um, it's Houston.

I would think Houston.

I would think Minnesota maybe, um.

New York, if they don't have to give up too much, if it's just swapping out Carl Towns and you can play with Brunson and some other guys that are there.

I think if you look about teams that have the best chance to win, given what Miami would have to give up to go and get Giannis, I, I don't.

That's my point.

And look, I don't think that Giannis is gonna, you know, hand the Bucks sort of this is the one team I'll play for and no one else the way we have seen some other superstars do.

I think he is flexible in his thinking about where he could would go, but if he is going to leave Milwaukee, which as we have seen is a hard decision for him.

The only reason he is leaving Milwaukee is because he doesn't think he can win there anymore and he wants to win another title.

Therefore, the only decision he's gonna make going forward is where do I have the best chance to win.

And no, he's not completely in the driver's seat because the front office makes the trade, but he's only got one year left on his deal.

And when you are that kind of player with only one year left on your deal, Kawhi and Toronto aside, that was a blip.

Generally, teams are not going to give up the farm, which is what we are talking about.

For a guy, they haven't been given an assurance that he would sign an extension with them.

So he is gonna have a say for all these people who say, oh, things deteriorated between him and the Bucks in that last month or two, and, you know, forget making Giannis happy, they're just gonna do what's best for them.

Uh yeah, but what's best for them is gonna be partly what makes Giannis happy because that is who they are gonna get the best trade offer from.

I mean, that's just a fact.

I agree.

I agree, um.

The one to put a button on the Riley stuff , uh, he had to address this because this was leaked out there.

I, and I apologize, I forget who initially reported that Nick Garrison was kind of in charge now and leading the ship.

But somebody put that out there, like, that was leaked somewhere.

Uh, I, I thought that was fascinating, like, because who is telegraphing that?

Who is messaging that?

Who gains from something like that?

Because what just happened there was Nick Harrison, who most people don't know, they just know as the son of Mickey Arison.

And Nick is, to Nick, I'm not bad mouthing Nick because Nick has been involved in the day to day for a very long time, like he's been.

But for the average fan that don't know him.

Like this is being framed as like Nick Arison, the owner's son, is now making basketball decisions ahead of Pat Rudd.

I'm just saying how this is being framed, how it looks optically.

Somebody put that out there, Rachel.

Like somebody, this, this was put into the universe for a reason.

I have no, I, I can't say that because sometimes things do leak.

So I'm not saying that this was leaked.

Who does it benefit without somebody benefiting?

Qui bono, who benefits?

Like this is, I mean, this is Pat Riley benefits.

I know.

Well, I'm, I'm not.

Yes, somebody, I'm just saying I, this stuff doesn't really leak.

It from the way I think fans might initially interpret it, they might think, oh wow, it was leaked out there.

Pat's not really in charge anymore.

That's a blow to his ego.

No, Pat's out here saying this is disappointing.

I'm disgruntled the way the last few years have gone, have not been heat basketball.

If it's leaked, well, I haven't really been in charge in this thing.

So I don't, I don't know, but I, I don't know.

You're into the Machiavellian.

I just, I just found that story fascinating because somebody out there put a big bull's eye on Nick Harrison.

Like, if, if this team makes weird moves or if this team continues to struggle, now all of a sudden it's out there in the universe that Nick Harrison is the one in charge, and you had Pat Riley, to your point saying like, yeah, well, it's always been the case.

He is in charge.

Like, so no, I don't know.

The Heat just feel, it just feels kind of stale down there right now.

And, and maybe that happens.

They've been, they've been on a two-decade run with the same.

Head coach, the same front office, and they are tremendously successful.

It just feels like.

They've come to the end of the line.

I don't know how they get past that line.

Like, I, I don't know how they can, they get back in contention without hitting the reset button and doing one of those rebuilds that they don't want to do.

Well, this is what we've been talking about all spring with the tanking conversation, right?

Right now, the real avenue for teams to get better is by throwing it all away, tanking for a couple of years, getting better through high draft picks , and then moving forward.

That's it.

That's the way.

They can do it.

And if you're a team that refuses to tank, or if all of these quote tanking reforms are gonna come into effect, that's gonna penalize teams for doing the one thing they can do to get better, you were gonna see more of this.

You're gonna see steam teams stuck in middle of the road purgatory, which is where I would put the heat right now, or teams stuck at the bottom, which is where you would put a lot of, you know, the teams that perhaps the team from the city I come from is right now, um, on the way up, on the way up.

No, I, you know, I think that, but that I, I, I, I just.

We are going to see in the next few months decisions being made about how teams can operate again with overcorrections again and again, we're gonna talk about this before the draft lottery which both you and I are planning on attending .

I'm coming with more visual aids as I like to do occasionally on this podcast because since the lottery was tweaked, things have gotten worse.

Don't keep expanding the lottery.

Get rid of the lottery.

The worst teams get the best players.

It will be a race to the bottom among 3 or 4 teams.

As opposed to among 15 teams, and they will get better and then they won't be at the bottom anymore.

If you want to limit how many times in a row or how many times in 4 years a team can get in that top 3 or top 4 of the draft, that's fine, but you have to give them a chance to get better, and there has to be other ways to do it.

And that's to an extent, even though they're not a tanking team because they don't want to be.

Here's a team that's the NBA's dream, right?

We don't want to tank.

We are not going to tank.

That is not heat culture.

OK?

They don't have enough avenues to get better.

We have to change that.

You know who benefits from expanding the lottery?

The Miami Heat I mean, kind of a middle of the pack because they've been in that middle of the pack tier in the last couple of years, but then they'll have a 0.8% chance of getting a top draft pick.

Maybe it's, it's not a strategy, man.

Well, no, but I think then their draft picks become maybe a little more valuable via trade if they're kind of, if you think that there's the potential that they.

If you think, if a team thinks those have the potential to be lottery picks, even if they're crappy lottery picks, then that's better than not being lottery picks.

They're better being kind of mid to mid-team, even 20s types of picks.

But it makes it so much harder to predict if you put 18 teams in the lottery.

100%.

I, I hate it.

So therefore it devalues even the, I'm, I'm just saying like the Miami Heat are one of those teams that I think would benefit from the lottery expanding, at least when it comes to their potential trade talks over the next couple of years.

Solve the problem.

Stop trying to solve the symptom.

Let's save that for another week.