“Nostalgia — it’s delicate but potent.” — Miami Heat
It’s almost impossible to imagine Pat Riley failing. He’s done so little of it over the course of his career that it’s just a hard visual to get. The day LeBron James left the Miami Heat, there was no panic in Riley’s voice. No despair. Only disappointment. Like Don in a sales pitch, we all thought, “It’s Riley. He’ll figure it out. He always does.”
And yet here we are, four years later – has it really been that long? – and the Miami Heat are no closer to recovering from LeBron’s departure than they were in 2014. It could be argued that the Cavs, only four months removed from the Decision 3.0, are in a better position to start building something new.
The Heat, meanwhile, are in no man’s land, stuck in mid-40’s win purgatory with the highest payroll in the league. They are a team of third, fourth and fifth starters. The latest rumor has them potentially in the driver’s seat for Jimmy Butler, which, if you squint hard enough, kind of looks like Riley getting a little bit of the old magic back.
Rub your eyes and look again. Dealing assets for the right to pay Butler’s next contract would be a desperation move for a 73-year-old that isn’t about to tear things down and rebuild from scratch (Not that such a pivot would necessarily even be possible; the Heat still owe an unprotected 2021 first rounder from the Dragic trade, and most of their bloated salaries don’t come off the books until 2020).
Through it all, there’s been no panic. No hot takes that Riles has lost his fastball. No one saying he missed a golden opportunity to take Danny Ainge’s gift basket of picks three years ago instead of drafting Justise Winslow. That move that would have reset the deck. Instead, the Heat are holding onto relevance by the fingernails.
We still see the slicked hair, the Armani suits and the calm demeanor and think everything is going to be OK.
It’s Riley. It has to be.
Doesn’t it?