Pat Riley
Pat Riley
Patrick James "Pat" Rileyis an American professional basketball executive, and a former coach and player in the National Basketball Association. He has been the team president of the Miami Heat since 1995 and head coach in two separate tenures. Widely regarded as one of the greatest NBA coaches of all time, Riley has served as the head coach of five championship teams, four with the Los Angeles Lakers and one with the Heat...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionCoach
Date of Birth20 March 1945
CityRome, NY
CountryUnited States of America
Anybody who's got the kind of energy to try to hoist up (nearly) 70 shots is going to score a lot of points. It's remarkable, the execution and the efficiency, but we've got a lot of guys in this league, if they took 70 shots, they'd score a lot of points.
Antoine is somebody that I definitely haven't handled well from an offensive standpoint. 'Catch as catch can' isn't good enough. You have to go to him more.
Antoine is capable of having an outrageous night. I was going to sub for him but I just wanted to get him one more possession. We allowed Antoine to bring it up a couple of times. He hit a three and I kept him in the game.
Any time he gets in foul trouble and sits down, that sets him back and sets us back. You have to try to keep him on the floor for normal minutes. But when he gets that third and fourth foul, we get out of rhythm.
This is an entirely different basketball team than I've ever coached. The personalities are different. There's a lot of great things. There's a lot of things that have to be purged. It's just a whole different view. There's a lot of good parts, so it's going to take some time to figure it all out.
The upside is there could be absolute power dominance inside. But the downside is somebody could say, 'OK, you're going to go big, I'm going to go with five guards -- one shooting center and four guards.' And then who's going to beat who first?
Strange things happen when you think things are at their worst. I thought Gary (Payton) did a great job of running the offense and making some big plays in the fourth quarter. James Posey had timely shots and two big offensive tip-outs. We had other players step up when we had to.
Strange things happen when you think they're at their really worst. We needed the win, that's all there is to it.
Definitely we'll fight that one. If it was, they better give a flagrant foul to whoever hit him in the end (Jermaine O'Neal). It was the same kind of foul. It's getting ridiculous.
Offense I don't think is going to be a problem for us. It's sustained defensive intensity.
A game that could have been very, very ugly for us turned out to be a win, and that's all that counts.
After a real slow start, we played very well offensively. When your best player goes 4-for-14 and you still win, then you've got to feel good about it.
They shoot the ball extremely well. All of a sudden you're staying home, and now they're going to the basket. So they present a lot of problems.
This is about an experienced, savvy, talented team which I believe we have taking advantage of the opportunities out there. But one thing they cannot neglect is just how hard (Chicago) is going to play and the kind of effort they're going to have to make to stay with them.