MIAMI (AP) — Pat Riley turns 80 in a couple of months. The Miami Heat president has not revealed any retirement timetable. He still wears impeccable suits, shakes hands with as firm of a grip as anyone, knows all eyes are on him when he walks into just about any room.
He’s not stopping. Or changing.
“He’s a rock. And that’s why he’s the Godfather,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said last month. “That’s why we all kill ourselves for this culture. It’s because of him. We believe in him.”
And, as some have learned over the years, clashing with Riley doesn’t always end well.
Jimmy Butler’s in-progress breakup with the Heat — Miami didn’t give him an extension, Butler wants a trade, the franchise suspended him for seven games for conduct detrimental to the team, and here we are — is not the first time that a superstar has been in Miami but had his time with Riley’s team come to an unceremonious end.
Dwyane Wade left (but returned). LeBron James left. Shaquille O’Neal got traded. All of those situations — and Butler’s, as well — are different in plenty of ways. But the parallel in them in that Riley will only do what he thinks is best for the Heat.
“I know from personal experience,” O’Neal said in his role as an analyst on TNT last week. “You can’t bicker with Pat Riley.”
A look at those situations:
Jimmy Butler
How they got here: Butler was eligible for a $113 million, two-year extension last summer. The Heat didn’t offer it, so this dispute is largely about money.
There’s more to it, of course.
Butler is not an easy guy to deal with, which is not a knock on him nor is it a bad thing. He’s headstrong, driven, says what he thinks, doesn’t really care what you think, does the work and plays to win. It was a perfect fit for the Heat, who like to say that they’re not for everybody. Neither is Butler.
Riley made two comments last spring that Butler surely didn’t like: that he — and all of Miami’s best-paid players — need to play more often, and that Butler shouldn’t have talked about beating teams still in the playoffs when the Heat were not. (Butler made a comment about how if he wasn’t hurt the Heat would have beaten Boston and New York in the postseason; Riley didn’t like that he said that.)
Butler has said for years that he only wants to be wanted. Evidently, he did not feel wanted in Miami any longer.
Dwyane Wade
There were a lot of factors in this story. Money was not the only issue, but it was among them.
Wade thought about leaving in the summer of 2015 before he and the team agreed on a one-year, $20 million contract. A year later, the Heat offered Wade every dollar they had available — about $42 million for two years. Chicago offered about $47 million. And that was that.
Chicago is Wade’s hometown. Ironically, Butler was on that Bulls team that Wade was joining; Wade played a big role in convincing Butler to go to Miami in 2019. Eventually, whatever hard feelings existed between Wade and Heat went away; he finished his career in Miami and the team rewarded him with a statue earlier this season.
Riley was contrite when Wade left.
“That is where we both failed … I more than he, because he’s the asset, he’s the star, he’s the face of the franchise,” Riley said at that time. “I should have done everything that I could have verbally in trying to change his mindset to mine, a big picture, a better picture, or one that I thought would help him.”
In 2018, Wade’s longtime agent, Henry Thomas, died. Riley was part of the Heat contingent that went to the funeral. He and Wade hugged. A couple weeks later, Miami swung a deal with Cleveland — Wade had moved on from Chicago — to bring the franchise’s all-time scoring leader back to Miami.
“It ended the way it was supposed to end,” Wade said in his final days as a Heat player.
Shaquille O’Neal
O’Neal was traded to Miami in 2004. Two years later, the Heat won a title. Two years after that, they were broken down, Wade was hurt, and the team was headed to the bottom of the NBA.
O’Neal didn’t want to be in Miami anymore. He got traded to Phoenix. Initially, the breakup was not exactly amicable; over time, wounds were healed on both sides. O’Neal’s number hangs from the rafters and he’s welcomed back like a long-lost hero every time he’s in Miami for a game.
“It was not personal,” Riley said when the team retired O’Neal’s jersey in 2016. “Shaq was impeccable with his word. He came down here and said ‘We’re gonna win a title, Coach.’ And we won a title. … No hard feelings, at all. I’m an Irishman and I forgive.”
LeBron James
There are a ton of theories about why James left the Heat after four years, four runs to the NBA Finals and two championships in Miami.
Was everything perfect? No. But when the Heat lost the 2014 finals to San Antonio, ending their two-year reign as NBA champions, James was on the verge of free agency. It was widely believed that he would strongly consider leaving.
“You’ve got to stay together — if you’ve got the guts — and you don’t find the first door and run out of it,” Riley said in a now-infamous speech a few days after that season ended.
A couple weeks later, James made it official: He was going back to Cleveland.
“When I became a free agent in 2010, I felt what was best for me was to go to Miami,” James would say in that first season back in Cleveland. “And when I became a free agent once again this past summer, I thought what was best was going back home.”
And James’ Heat fans are still fans. James got a huge ovation when he returned to Miami for the first time as an opponent — and still does a decade later. Riley announced years ago that James’ number will also be retired by the Heat.
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