Losing Mourning hurts, but Heat still can contend

Sporting News, The, Oct 30, 2000 by Dave D'Alessandro

Pat Riley coaches centers. It is what he does. Dick Motta coached forwards, often boasting that anyone taller than 6-6 with a working pulse could average 20 points in his system.

Some coaches--Don Nelson, for example --prefer hybrids. It is a matter of preference and style. It's what they're good at.

But Riley's thing is centers, and for the first time in 19 years, he finds himself without the one component that always has made him the biggest bear in the woods.

When camp opened, Riley issued his guys a playbook that contained 257 pages. Now most of them are obsolete. Now the prevailing consensus is the Miami Heat, without Alonzo Mourning, also is obsolete. The coach himself helped promote that notion, though I suspect it was just the fine-tuned anxiety of the hideous circumstances he found himself in last week.

"I've had Zo here going on my sixth year now and everything's built around Alonzo," Riley said after Mourning's kidney disorder ended his season. "The offense is built around him--the first look, second look, last look. Now we're going to have to make some changes. And who are we going to now? Who are going to be the main guys?"

The offseason had been an absolute triumph. Riley brought Eddie Jones, arguably the best shooting guard in the East, to town. He brought in Anthony Mason, a combo forward who annoys opponents and teammates alike. And he acquired Brian Grant, who is primed to restore his image as a big-time rebounder.

But Mourning was a star--perhaps not the straw that stirs the drink, but the 90-proof ingredient that would have turned a nice team into a special team. The anchor of the offense and the best defender in the league, period.

Now he's gone, perhaps forever, and we all lose. Mourning, for all his postseason failures, was the perfect Riley player--the kind who could intimidate through sheer force of will.

Knicks assistant Don Chaney puts it best when he calls Mourning the league's touchstone: "Alonzo, he just had a way of making things so competitive for everybody else," Chaney says. "He's the best competitor in the league, without a doubt, and there's nobody even close. It hurts all of us."

Especially the Heat. How does it recover?

Riley begins by working on his players' heads:

"Our players have to understand that, as of today, the anchor of the team is gone," he says. "And the quicker they get to understand that, then the quicker they'll move on and realize that for the time being it's their team."

Remaking it into their team will be a challenge, but knowing the history of these players--knowing this coach--it can and will be done. Miami will remain formidable--maybe not the team that will dust the East as a formality over the next six months, but one that still can be best in a very weak conference.

The biggest adjustment will come defensively because they're losing a guy who thinks any shot taken within 12 feet of the cup is a personal affront. Eventually, the Heat will make Riley rethink his mantra--no double-teams, period--and the team will rework its schemes to prevent an onslaught from the Shaqs and Tim Duncans of this world. The Heat has three of the best on-ball defenders in the business, and it will figure it out.

No team is ever prepared to deal with a loss of this magnitude, but Miami will learn how it has to play. And the consensus that Miami cannot recover will prove incorrect. The Heat has as good a chance to win the East as anybody for two reasons. Mental toughness is one--it is ingrained in all of them, and the center just happened to be the most visible embodiment of that. The other is having a coach who gets the most out of every guy on the roster, one through 12, even when No. 1 is convalescing.

In a season such as this one, in a conference without a dominant team, that will make all the difference.

inside dish

Pacers PG Jalen Rose, out for a month with a broken wrist, wrapped his cast with black tape for a reason: "I didn't want nobody signing it," he says. "I wanted it to be ugly because that's how I feel. You can't get no uglier than this." ... Celtics coach Rick Pitino hasn't been asked for the obligatory denial, but here's what one G.M. says: Pitino already has phoned Indiana University, or at least had someone call on his behalf to see if it would be mutually beneficial for him to take over the Hoosiers program next season.... The Blazers think C Arvydas Sabonis will miss the start of the season, which means PF Dale Davis will open this season the way he ended the last one: trying to keep Lakers C Shaquille O'Neal from rolling over him.... Some guys will do anything to get their baseball fix. Take Raptors PF Charles Oakley, for example. He strolled up to 76ers PF Tyrone Hill during warmups and slapped him in the back of the head, which nearly started a riot and got both of them tossed. Oak spent the game in the locker room watching the NLCS.... There is no evidence Heat C Alonzo Mourning's malfunctioning kidney was a result of taking anti-inflammatory medication, but it has made his peers re-evaluate the long-term effects of these drugs. Timberwolves SF Sam Mitchell says, "People say we're stupid if we take too much and hurt our bodies down the line, but then if we don't play, they say we're soft and can't play with pain. You're damned if you do, damned if you don't. Guys who play through everything get all this praise, but is it really the smartest thing to do? You think people are going to care what might happen to your body in 15 years?"