Riley Tinkers With Success

By Jerry Crowe

May 31, 2006 12 AM PT

Times Staff Writer

For Pat Riley, “There’s winning, and there’s misery.”

Nothing in between for the Miami Heat president -- now coach again, as well -- which is why he tore up his roster last summer, even though the Heat had narrowly missed reaching the NBA Finals, losing to the Detroit Pistons in the Eastern Conference finals.

It didn’t matter to Riley that the Heat might have won the championship if its stars, Shaquille O’Neal and Dwyane Wade, hadn’t been injured in the playoffs.

“We were a minute and a half away from the Finals -- big deal,” Riley told reporters on the eve of this season. “It’s about winning a championship.”

Nothing else would do.

And so he upgraded the roster, surrounding Wade and O’Neal with more talent, then wondered why anyone would question him.

Why wouldn’t he want Antoine Walker, a three-time All-Star who had averaged nearly 20 points a game in nine NBA seasons?

Or Gary Payton, a nine-time All-Star and veteran leader?

Or Jason Williams, a virtual magician with the basketball?

Because they’re headstrong and hard for coaches to reach, skeptics offered. The doubters thought that egos would clash and the Heat would crash. They said former stars would not easily adjust to lesser roles, bit parts.

Talent was all that mattered to Riley.

“I knew all of these guys,” Riley, who had coached star-studded Lakers teams to four NBA championships in the 1980s, said this week. “I’d coached against most of them, I’d read all the articles about them.

“In L.A., we never had any problems, and we haven’t had any problems at all this year. There were times that I think the team was being judged very harshly -- it wasn’t working, and all of that. They felt bad about that, but never to the extent where there was any dissension or any of that. I think we had one exchange in the playoffs ... between Gary and Dwyane. But that was minor.”

Of course, all’s well now, with the Heat on the verge of reaching the NBA Finals for the first time in the history of the young franchise. (The Heat played its first game in November 1988, a few months after Riley had won his last title with the Lakers.)

The retooled Heat holds a 3-1 lead over the Pistons in the Eastern Conference finals, with Game 5 tonight at Auburn Hills, Mich.

But it was rocky going for a while during the regular season. The Heat wore a “scarlet letter,” Riley said, as it chugged to a 52-30 record amid much greater expectations, winning seven fewer games than last season and 12 fewer than the Pistons, whose 64-18 record was the NBA’s best.

The Heat was 2-12 against division winners, raising questions anew about why Riley had tinkered with success, letting go of starters Eddie Jones and Damon Jones and key reserves Keyon Dooling and Rasual Butler.

The shake-up started with the August signing of O’Neal to a five-year, $100-million contract, the former Laker agreeing to take $10 million a year less than he could have demanded so that Riley could spend it elsewhere.

O’Neal, in a sense, was acknowledging that he needed help.

Riley immediately engineered a five-team, 13-player trade that brought Walker, Williams and James Posey, all of whom would join the eight-man rotation.

In September, Payton was signed to back up Williams.

Injuries more than egos stalled the Heat. Riley returned to coaching after a two-year absence when Stan Van Gundy resigned in December, a move Riley signaled when he let slip last summer that he’d had a “whimsical thought” of returning, starting a flood of speculation about Van Gundy’s future.

With O’Neal sitting out 23 games, the Heat’s eight-man rotation -- including holdovers Udonis Haslem, the starting power forward, and backup center Alonzo Mourning -- was injury-free for only seven games all season.

For the playoffs, though, everybody was ready to go.

And the Heat took off.

Walker, who once told a reporter that he shot so many threes “because there are no fours,” has suppressed his ball-hogging, never-met-a-shot-I-didn’t-like tendencies and accepted his role as the third option behind Wade and O’Neal.

He’s averaging 13.5 points in the playoffs, the only Heat player other than Wade and O’Neal averaging more than 8.9.

Williams, whose shot selection and questionable decisions have irked former coaches, is the starting point guard and second on the team in assists behind Wade, but he usually sits out the fourth quarter in favor of Payton.

Payton, described by Phil Jackson as “perpetually distracted” during his season with the Lakers, is a reserve for the first time and has not complained.

As Riley had hoped, it’s all about winning with the Heat.

“He brought us in to get over the hump, win the Finals, get the championship,” Payton said. “We’ve been here before. We know what to do.”

Or, as Walker noted Sunday, “A lot of people don’t understand: The regular season don’t mean anything.”

The Heat does.

“This team is working right now,” Riley said. “It hasn’t worked, OK? We’ll see if it will work. We’ll know someday if it did work.”

And how will we know?

If it brings home the NBA championship, of course.

Anything less won’t do.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Riley facts

Pat Riley is in his 22nd season as a head coach, his ninth in Miami:

* Overall coaching record: 1,151-589.