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
We've got a couple of good games with this lineup. But what this lineup has yet to really prove to me is they haven't brought a whole lot of energy at the beginning of the game. I think that's a mental thing more than anything else.
We have been able to secure one of the most dominant men to ever play the game of basketball as a member of the Heat, ... At the same time, we have gained the flexibility to achieve our ultimate goal of winning an NBA championship.
He might get 100. If you can get 81 . . . absolutely. He has the mentality to do that and conditioning. He's one of the best conditioned athletes in the world.
We had a lot of shots around the basket that didn't go in. I thought we got frustrated by not getting the calls that we thought we should have got, which leads to complaining to the officials. ... There's got to be a lot more mental toughness against a team like this.
We thought we were going to win. We can play with anyone when we're really in it and focused mentally on what we have to take away from a team like that.
That's two games in a row that we showed, at a time when we need to show it, a real lockdown mentality defensively. It's not surprising to me if they're committed on doing it. They've done it off and on. Not consistent. It's when the mood strikes them.
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.