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
You have to leave the last two games behind us. We didn't like how we played up there. We didn't play very well. We didn't play well enough to win. Probably didn't deserve to win.
All year long we do 15 players, and they should do 15 in the playoffs. I don't understand the thinking at all behind it. We're the ones that have sort of dedicated ourselves in investing the money in three extra players and having them there, and we should be rewarded for that.
The first three or four minutes, they fronted him and put a guy behind him. Then they started to play him straight up and straight down. Then they started to double-team him, and he not only scored, but he picked their defense apart.
I'm sure that everybody will say that I'm just up here trying to complain, but I don't see how he could ever get to the basket. I don't care if he's 340 pounds. They get locked into such a defensive position that they just hold him. ... Impeding his progress. But he's got to find a way to get around that.
I'm tired of hearing it. Tired of hearing about how, well, we keep shooting ourselves in the foot or we're not doing this or we're not doing that. Somewhere, you've got to take responsibility for who you think you are.
I'm really tired of talking about it. I hate to do it, but there's a huge double standard here. He turns in, it's a foul on him. And they're pushing and shoving on him all the time.
The bigger the moment, both of them stepped up even bigger. Sometimes, it's absolutely beyond description. I haven't seen players do that in a long, long time.
The beginning was a disaster, an absolute disaster.
They have to understand when you go to somebody's building it's a big game.
They just kept raising the energy level. I hate to break that up.
They just kept hanging in there and then we finally opened it up in the second half.
The second half was like night and day from the first. We were so far out of sync at both ends of the court. To be quite frank, when we were down 21-5, we were blessed.
Once he gets into the open court, forget it.
It's not about long, enduring practices. It's about practicing on the right things. That's got to be our objective as we're trying to still close out the season.