Pat Riley’s fiery intensity and burning desire to win will be present on both sides as the Miami Heat and New York Knicks meet in the playoffs.
USA TODAY Sports' Jeff Zillgitt explains why the league stands to gain so much when the New York Knicks are a part of the playoffs.When the Miami-New York Eastern Conference semifinals series opens Sunday at Madison Square Garden, Heat president Pat Riley will be in the arena, a venue he knows well.Directly and indirectly, his influence is all over this series.
“He’s one of the ultimate competitors in this league,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra told USA TODAY Sports in 2020. “If you put together a Mount Rushmore of NBA winners and influencers of the last 40 years, he’s on that rock. Just look at his track record. He has reinvented himself more times than arguably anybody else in this league. It always is to put whatever team he’s with in the best chance to compete for a title, and he’s done that over and over.
The Heat aren’t for everyone either. Players have left, been traded and run off, but it can be rewarding for players who want to be a part of it -- Alonzo Mourning, Shaquille O’Neal, Dwyane Wade, LeBron James, Chris Bosh and Udonis Haslem. The Heat belie their eight seed and no one will be surprised if they reach the conference finals again this year. The Heat compete -- a hallmark of the Spoelstra-Riley teams -- and that keeps them close enough to win games.Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau is part of a branch of the Riley coaching tree. Thibodeau never coached on one of Riley’s staff, but he was an assistant for Jeff Van Gundy’s New York and Houston’s teams, and Van Gundy was a Riley assistant.
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