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
They are a perimeter team that shoots the ball well, that if you're not covering and taking away their air space then someone's going to get you somewhere.
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.
He's been very aggressive posting up and around the hoop. He's taking those outlet passes and getting over people in traffic and becoming stronger inside.
He was absolutely great. He did things I haven't seen him do for a couple of years. He's got a lot of energy and he's taking two or three people to the rim. He's picking people apart.
That was a game situation. He's supposed to be on the court, but I had a hard time taking anybody off the court at that time, because we were down and then we went ahead by eight. As a coach, you're going to ride that lineup as long as you can.
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.