Riley Blueprint Works in Miami

He has been adored, but he’s no Boy Scout. He has been offered leading roles in movies, but he’s no actor. He has worn people out and left places flat and has been reviled for it, but no matter what the New York Post says, he’s no rat.

“Pat,” said his former teammate, roommate and boss, Jerry West, once, “is a basketball coach.”

Not a mere coach, though, but a poet-coach, a philosopher-coach, a tyrant and, yes, savior.

The Miami Heat never knew days so heady before Pat Riley, but the Lakers and New York Knicks did.

The Lakers heard that “core covenant” stuff and the Knicks heard that “Tough

Team, Tough Town” stuff where they had the “Hardest-working, best-conditioned, most professional, unselfish, toughest, nastiest, most disliked team in the NBA.”

Now, Riley has a tough team in another town where fans wear “Hardest-working” etc. on Heat T-shirts.

It’s the same story-telling Riley too. With Riles, the game and lessons in life go hand in hand, so you can just imagine the cherubic faces of Alonzo Mourning and Tim Hardaway looking up at him, their eyes round as he relates the Sun Tsu parable of the island people who lost their home, built boats to sail back and reclaim it and, upon landing, were told by their leader to burn the boats. When they asked why, he told them now they’d have to win or die.

Riley has a million of them. In the days when the Boston Celtics bedeviled the Lakers’ ambitions, he gathered his players around to ask if they knew who the real Celtics were.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, related Riley, raised his hand and said they were a warring race of Danes who conquered Ireland.

Said Riles: “I had to explain they were also a cunning, secretive race. We had to learn to overcome the mythology of the Celtics.”

Which, of course, they did. The kicker to this one is that James Patrick Riley is, as his countrymen like to say, as Irish as Paddy’s pig.

These days, one senses a different Riley too, Riley the builder, aware there’s a season after this one, no longer as strung out as in New York where every loss was a crisis, a tabloid headline, sometimes a hunt for the informer within their midst and another day off Patrick Ewing’s productive life.

Now Riley has a young team. If the league had cut him some slack in the Juwan Howard affair, he already would have the next Eastern Conference power. As it is, he’s doing OK, although, as he has seemed to concede in each of the last two series, he knows he’s a player or two away.

His players compete like knights on crusade--they’d better--and talk of Riley’s stories in terms of awe. It’s great to be the president as well as the coach, with a 10-year deal and 20% of the franchise coming.

Of course, you can turn on ESPN’s “SportsCenter” and see a chart showing Mourning’s modest numbers, suggesting he’s not a $105-million player, but Riley knows better. He took over a 32-50 team and two years later went 61-21. If no one has won a title with Mourning, he gave Riley a lot of credibility fast.

“He’s taking up a lot of room on that cap,” Riley says. “You know what? I’m glad. I am.

“He’s 26 years old [27 actually]. He’s young. Patrick, I hope, couple, three years will be gone, Hakeem [Olajuwon] will be gone, lot of guys might be gone and maybe one day he will be the premier player. I know a lot of people don’t think that, but Zo’s working hard to get better. I’ve seen tremendous improvement in his game.”

Riley still looks like the guy who divided NBA life into winning and misery, then subdivided winning into savoring the victory and being too damn tired to savor the victory.

Named coach of the year for the third time, he asked who else had won it that many times.

“Don Nelson,” came the reply.

“He’s in Maui, isn’t he?” asked Riley, in a quip only another coach could really appreciate.

On the other hand, he has had his moments. After the Heat advanced by eliminating the Knicks, he sat in his office with reporters, thinking back over the last two tumultuous seasons.

“That Pat the Rat stuff,” he said, “it’s been two years; I’ve tried to put it behind me.”

He laughed.

“But I’m one happy rat right now.”

IN THE WESTERN FINALS,

JAZZ 2, CRYBABIES 1

Here’s another reason it might have been nice for the league to use some common sense.

If five Knicks are suspended from Games 6 and 7 of a series they lead, 3-2, for a no-punch fight, what does Houston’s Charles Barkley deserve for running over little John Stockton three times, at least twice deliberately, then announcing he was trying to separate the Utah guard’s shoulder?

Lock him up and throw away the key for the rest of the postseason?

Here’s a better one--make him keep going out there and trying to guard Karl Malone by himself.

Of course, the real penalty was: one flagrant foul, or in other words, nothing.

The Rockets were pathetic in Salt Lake City. Before the series, Mario Elie came out and said their big guys were going to run over the Jazz guards setting screens in the lane for Malone. Barkley proceeded to do just that and Stockton kept getting up and playing great. Then Coach Rudy Tomjanovich bleated about how illegal those screens were and sent a tape to the league, etc.

The truth was, the old Rockets looked gassed after going seven games against the Seattle SuperSonics, whom they neglected to close out with a 3-1 lead and Game 5 in their house. Rudy T ought to go over that Game 5 tape and see if he can find something to convince the league to give him a do-over.

LOTTO FEVER;

TIME TO START GUESSING

With so many young players who won’t be evaluated until all of the teams have had them in for workouts, here’s how the top of the lottery shapes up:

1. San Antonio--Tim Duncan (Wake Forest). Only no-brainer choice this time.

2. Philadelphia--Larry Brown wants a big man, will trade for one, or choose between Tony Battie (Texas Tech)or Tim Thomas (Villanova). I’d guess Battie, a power forward, rather than Thomas, a big small forward.

3. Boston--Everyone’s eager to see if Rick Pitino, devastated at losing Duncan, actually takes Ron Mercer, his star at Kentucky, whom he has told everyone is so good. I’d guess, in a surprise, yes.

4. Vancouver--Has been talking about trading the pick, with so many kids already on the team. Let’s say someone trades up here and takes Thomas.

5. Denver--Chauncey Billups. They need a point guard, and he’s not only a big, young, good one but a local, from the University of Colorado.

6. Boston--Wanted Billups. Wanted Duncan. Will take Adonal Foyle, the big power forward from Colgate . . . or Tracy McGrady, the high school kid.

Local note: The Pacers, drafting 12th, had Charles O’Bannon (UCLA) in. They aren’t likely to take him, but an invitation from a lottery team suggests he’ll go in the first round.

THE DONALD JOINS

THE MAINSTREAM

Not only is Bill Fitch the first coach Donald T. Sterling ever rehired, he’s Sterling’s first $1-million coach, not to mention his first $2-million coach.

Fitch, who made $850,000 last season, will get $1.6 million and $2.4 million.

Not that this is all that has to be done. If Sterling wants Fitch to be the organization’s strong man, as he has said privately, he has to say it publicly, or he’s asking for another tug of war.

But this is momentous news in Clipperdom--a man in charge!