In Miami, the song remains the same for Riley and Heat

Sporting News, The, Feb 21, 2000 by Dave D'Alessandro

What I'm seeing from the Heat this month is something I've seen from Pat Riley teams before. It still is the hardest working team in show biz, a team that could bludgeon you into submission on its best nights and smile as it attacks you with full metal jacket. Then, because of age, injury, fatigue, biorhythms or some other NBA circumstance, things always seem to change for them. They go through stages of denial and stupefaction. Lately, they've passed through rage, which always had served them well in the past, on their way to numbness.

If you watched the Heat in that recent marquee game at New York, you saw what everybody else saw. Ask yourself this: Is this team any better than it was a year ago?

(Rhetorical question. Stop shaking your head.)

No fewer than four of their closest competitors--the Hornets, Raptors, 76ers and Knicks--are able to say their best ball still is ahead of them. Miami, however, is the one team in the East that didn't get younger in the offseason. It is the one team that didn't add any speed to any position, except perhaps to the coach's metabolic rate. It is the one team that considers a 33-year-old point guard with two bad knees its second most important player.

Tim Hardaway's inability to get his game going, in fact, is the thing that stands out the most about this team. He is a free agent this summer, and even though Riley says that won't have any impact on his personnel decisions before next week's trade deadline, you wonder now whether this is a good approach anymore.

Sure, G.M. Randy Pfund was in San Francisco last weekend but only to remind his peers that Miami's core players were unavailable. They won't move P.J. Brown, Pfund says, even though Brown's weight (down to 228 pounds) is dropping as quickly as his rebounding numbers, even if he can get Glen Rice in return. They won't move Jamal Mashburn, Pfund says, even though they considered sending him to Philadelphia for Larry Hughes three weeks ago. Hardaway is damaged goods, and isn't going anywhere, either. And you don't trade Alonzo Mourning, who is merely the second-best center in the world.

So unless someone is willing to take Voshon Lenard and Mark Strickland for a backcourt player with impact, what you see is what you'll get. And what you see is a team that seems to be running out of steam.

You say they're first in the Atlantic, second in the East? I say they've gone 15-13 over the last two months. You say they still get up for the big ones? I say that in their last seven games before the All-Star break, they beat the Celtics, Wizards, Warriors and Pistons (without Grant Hill), and lost to the Pacers, Raptors and Knicks. You say Riley is the best coach in the business and will get them to respond? I say that the first part is indisputable, but the second part is something worth examining over the next few months.

Riley looks at things like "effort numbers"--steals, blocked shots, drawn charges--and says they're way down against the good teams. Whatever. It comes down to this: The Heat's play of late suggests a loss of faith. Or at the very least, the need for an All-Star break, which came at a good time.

On February 7, Riley did something that was vintage Riley. That was on the first of two consecutive off-days. He kept his players at practice for more than six hours, half of which was devoted to watching the horror film they co-produced at Madison Square Garden the day before. He says the players needed it, adding with a grin, "I think they enjoyed it, to be honest with you. They got to drink Gatorade. They got to grade one another They got to judge the tape. It was a very interesting exercise."

If it were so interesting, one must wonder why Rex Walters was the only one making like Roger Ebert. The rest of them mostly listened. By the time it was over, the Heat players likely were eager to run for three hours.

I'm all for hard work, but it's hard to forget that there was a time in Los Angeles and New York when Riley's guys thought he misjudged their limits. For years, they would accept his methods because he is a great coach who delivered victories. But when the big games began to elude them, Riley made the same mistake in both places: He didn't go out and recruit new disciples.

Then it was too late.

Riley said something interesting last week. Dismissing the notion of burnout, he instead conceded they can no longer deal with the expectations that have been set for them--expectations set by their coach and by themselves.

His conclusion: "The only thing we can do is fail," Riley says. "And it felt the same with me when I was in Los Angeles and felt the same way in New York. Once we set a standard that we should be winning, then it's never good enough, you don't ever win enough, all you can do is fail. And our players have to learn how to deal with the swirl of negativity and second-guessing, questioning, trade rumors and all this stuff and get some life back into their game, into their approach."

Sure, if Hardaway is healthy at closing time, the Heat can come out of a mediocre conference. But I don't see that happening anymore: Hardaway missed seven weeks and privately disagreed with Riley's timetable when he was in rehab, and Hardaway can't possibly believe that consecutive three-hour practices after that loss at the Garden was in his best interests. You don't think Hardaway knew what he was doing when he took his time getting back?