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With Arison using his speech on Saturday to chronicle the Heat’s story, it didn’t take him long to praise each of his three Hall of Fame presenters. “Pat is one of a kind,” Arison said. “He and his wife Chris have become great friends. We’ve been through highs, we’ve been through lows and he’s still an unstoppable force. Pat, we boarded the Carnival Imagination for your introductory press conference in 1995 and you talked about a parade down Biscayne Boulevard. We’ve now had three of those championship parades and have been a Hall of Fame organization ever since. There’s no way I’m standing here tonight without you.”
Arison took control of the Heat in 1995, helping to build an organization that’s considered one of the NBA’s most successful franchises during over that 30-year stretch. One of the first things Arison did after becoming the Heat’s owner was hire Riley in September 1995, which ended up turning into one of Arison’s top basketball accomplishments. “Our plan was simple. Do right by South Florida and build a winner,” Arison said during his speech. “The first thing I did was join forces with Pat Riley. A proven winner, a champion and one of the greatest winners in NBA history.”
Michael Beasley on what he would change in his career: 'I would have listened to Pat Riley'
Michael Cooper: If you had this to do all over again, your career, I mean, and again, you said you were distracted from a lot of things, what would you have eliminated in order to make a better career? Michael Beasley: ‘If I did it all over again, I would have listened to Pat Riley. Pat Riley told me to get a condo, get two bedrooms, one for my mom when she come in town… I went the polar opposite… I got a six-bedroom house, got three dogs, had three, four of my friends staying in… and then from it, that's where all the problems came from. I was bailing people out of jail… my uncle was fighting a RICO… my godfather got nine, ten years… So to me, I was really dealing with problems.
Pat Riley on Micky Arison: He basically saved my coaching career
“He saved basically my coaching life, I think. When I look back at that summer [1995], it was highly doubtful that I was actually going to be able to coach the next year or whatever. So when that finally came to fruition and I became the coach in September [1995], we both went to work and we went to work on trying to make the team better.”
“As an owner, to me, he showed tremendous loyalty to myself, our staff, the people in the organization that have been there ever since he bought it,” Riley said of Arison during a conference call with South Florida reporters on Monday afternoon. “He’s a tremendously honest guy. He’s always been very honest with me, whether I wanted to hear it or not. We’ve always had that kind of relationship. And I believe that he’s very sincere about what he really wanted to accomplish, which he really wanted to win. He’s a winner. “So I trusted Micky from that standpoint. I think what we’ve been able to accomplish over the 30 years is really good. We’ve built something, I think, that South Florida enjoys from a sports entertainment concept and winning championships and getting to the Eastern Conference finals. But more than that, I think that night in and night out Micky wanted to make sure that the people in South Florida thought we could win, we were competitive. Even the years that we knew that we may not be the team, we fought like hell to be the team.”
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Michael Beasley opened up on what he’d change about his career: “If I could do it all over again, I would have just listened to Pat Riley. Pat told me to get a condo for me and my mom. I got a 6-bedroom house, dogs, homies staying in… that’s where the problems came from.”
Lakers will reveal Pat Riley statue when team plays Celtics
Dave McMenamin: The Lakers will unveil a Pat Riley statue at http://Crypto.com Arena on Feb. 22 when the team hosts the rival Boston Celtics, the team announced. Riley won two of his four championships coaching the Lakers against Boston.
Longer term? He would be an attractive candidate to head an expansion team, which is now firmly on the NBA’s radar, or could be an intriguing choice to run the NBA’s proposed addition of an NBA-sanctioned league in Europe. In the meantime, Ujiri would be an obvious candidate for leadership roles as they open across the NBA, with some league insiders keeping an eye on the Miami Heat, given that Heat president Pat Riley recently turned 80.
Barry Jackson: Norm Powell spoke with Heat people today and Riley said Heat has wanted him for a while: "Pat likes my little floater I’ve developed over the years. Being able to work on both sides of the floor, me one side, Tyler on the other" is exciting.
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How special was it for you to have your No. 21 jersey retired by the Lakers? What did that moment mean to you? Michael Cooper: That’s the one that brought me to tears. Hall of Fame I cried a little bit because I was a little emotional because you’re thinking about all the people that helped you out along that path. But the criteria for getting your jersey number retired I was told by the late great Jerry West was a little different and you had to be an All-Star; you had to have certain criterias — you had to average 15 or something points, but with Jeanie Buss taking the lead of her dad Dr. [Jerry] Buss, who’s always been an innovator and creator and just doing different things out of the norm; when they came and told me that they were going to honor me, and I think a little bit of that had to do with me being in the Hall of Fame, I never ever could see my jersey being hung up in the rafters for however long basketball to be played wherever it is that the Lakers play is the ultimate honor and I’ve always played this game for the love of the game and once I got the love in me, I’ve always played for championships and I’ve always wanted to be part of something special; and the Lakers is like family. That’s the only organization that I’ve ever known. I’ve never played for another owner — I’ve played for different coaches, but Pat Riley was THE COACH for me.
Brad Townsend: Rick Carlisle (Mavericks, Pacers) joins a select group of coaches to take 2 franchises to The Finals. Others include: Alex Hannum (Celtics, Lakers) Red Auebach (Capitols, Celtics) Phil Jackson (Bulls, Lakers) Pat Riley (Lakers, Knicks, Heat) Larry Brown (Sixers, Pistons)
The preparation for next month’s NBA Draft this week took Heat president Pat Riley and several team officials to Southern California, where they checked out several players expected to go in Miami’s draft range at No. 20. Riley, vice president/basketball operations Adam Simon, director of college/pro scouting Keith Askins and team executive Eric Amsler were in Los Angeles for Pro Day workouts. One of those workouts, which is coordinated by Rich Paul’s Klutch Sports Group, included at least three players projected to go in the late teens or 20s — Illinois forward Will Riley, Florida point guard Walter Clayton Jr. and St. Joseph’s power forward Rasheer Fleming.
Barry Jackson: Someone asked today about a succession plan, about Spo maybe replacing Riley upstairs. That's not in works; Riley shrugged that off. Pat on Spo: "He never takes a year off, never takes a break, had some personal issues in his life. I’ve seen the stress on him like I’ve never seen it before. This takes a toll. When I talked to him the other day, he said he was going to Hawaii.
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