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December
27, 2002 12:00 p.m. |
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t's been a tough season for Pat Riley, coach of the Miami Heat. It isn't
Christian to take pleasure in another man's misfortune (especially during
this season) which is probably why the word for doing it is German: schadenfreude,
a word that, lately, has been much overused. Still, there isn't a good
word in English for what a lot of basketball fans, especially in New York,
are feeling about Riley and his woes.
Riley used to coach in New York. He came to the city (you know the city) from Los Angeles, where he'd been the coach of the Lakers. This was in the early '90s and Knick fans were feeling parched. They had been wandering the desert for 20 long years and if they were ever to reach the promised land, it looked like they were going to have to go through Michael Jordan and Chicago to do it. The Lakers had won four championships during the '80s and a lot of people thought Riley was a big part of the reason. Among the people who believed this was Riley himself.
Now Riley did have some players in L.A. There was a guy named Kareem and another named Magic. But Riley was a star, he looked good in suits, there on the sideline, next to Dyan Cannon and Jack Nicholson and the other stars drawn by the bright lights when the Lakers lit up the floor.
Riley, New York fans figured, could do the same in the Garden, with a team built around Patrick Ewing and Manhattan celebrities like Woody Allen sitting in the stands. (This was when he was still with Mia, before the unpleasantness.) Riley, the faithful believed, had the answer.
The Knicks came close under Riley. But they won no championships. Still, with Riley there, many fans thought, those rings were inevitable. Coming close was so frustrating and tantalizing that fans treated Riley's departure for Miami in 1995 not as business, which it was, but as the act of a heretic. Given the chance, they would have stoned him in the Garden and sold tickets at playoff prices.
Riley got the whole candy store in Miami and he was expected to create a dynasty in Florida just as soon as he finished doing his 30-minute video demonstrating his technique for walking on water. Riley was, by now, not only a successful basketball coach, he was a high-dollar motivational speaker and bestselling author of books (Showtime and The Winner Within) on how to win in life and other things. Here's a sample:
Each Warrior wants to leave the mark of his will, his signature, on important acts he touches. This is not the voice of ego but of the human spirit, rising up and declaring that it has something to contribute to the solution of the hardest problems, no matter how vexing!
Millions of otherwise vexed readers were inspired to glory by jewels like this. Meanwhile, Riley did well in Miami but he did not part the waters. His teams made the playoffs, but just as often made news for getting into fights, including one memorable brawl with the Knicks, his old unit. There were no championships.
In mid-December, after a loss to the Knicks, Riley, himself, lost it. His team was winning barely 25 percent of their games — one of the worst records in basketball — and this is intolerable if your legend is that you have within you the secret; that you are the winner and can make winners wherever you go. That kind of legend does not allow for tough seasons where you just don't have the horses and aren't getting the bounces. There has to be another reason.
Riley, in a post-game tantrum, said it was the referees.
There are, in truth, some NBA refs who seem to think the game is all about them — just as there are coaches, like Riley, who seem to believe that they are the actual stars, not the guys in the short pants. One ref — a particular nemesis of Riley's named Steve Javie — is a special offender and terminal narcissist. Javie once ejected a team mascot from a game.
Still, Riley's reaction looks a lot like whining. And there is something both sad and satisfying in it. You don't expect bestselling books on the art of losing and no coach is hired because he knows how to lose and has lots of practice at it. But when it happens — as it will, even to "warriors" — then it would be edifying to see it handled with something like grace. Just before Christmas, the NBA fined Riley $50,000 for his outburst. And Riley put on his martyr clothes: "We understand what the rules are,'' he said, employing the royal plural favored by other self-pitying warriors, such as Richard Nixon. "If you exercise freedom of speech and they don't like it, they come down hard on you.''
Perhaps the NBA could have handed down a more Solomonic punishment
My suggestion is a reading assignment: "To a Friend Whose Work Has Come to Nothing," by William Butler Yeats.
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Geoffrey Norman writes on sports for NRO and other publications.