Last August, my wife and I relaxed by the pool at a luxurious resort in Cancun. We were on our honeymoon, surrounded by a hundred other couples with the same wedding date as us, which was really all we had in common. That was, of course, until I noticed the guy in the Red Sox hat. While everyone else sat virtually silent with nothing relevant to say to each other, we talked for over an hour about our beloved Sox—the comeback, Schilling’s bloody sock and that painful game seven of the 2003 ALCS.
Despite the fun we had, and aside from the “you’re really talking about sports right now?” look on my wife’s face, I’ll always remember that guy, that conversation and the way that sports brought us together.
That is what sports provides us with—they create a commonality between strangers, making us feel like we all are connected in a way that distance and time make impossible. For some reason, sports are more than just a bunch of kid games played by adults. They hold an intrinsic emotional value to us, providing a medium that allows everyone to relate as if we’d known each other for years. Sports are the temperature gauge of our society.
It’s incredible but true: as a country, we argue and get more worked up about issues like steroids, the NBA MVP and the importance of U.S. soccer on the global stage than we do issues that really affect our lives like, say, rising gas prices and our need to find alternative energy sources.
If you’re reading this, then guaranteed, you know sports is the only thing that would cause a normally rational person to lose his cool in a restaurant after overhearing the conversation at another table, about Mario Williams being a better pick than Reggie Bush. After all, some things can’t go unnoticed; they just instinctively grab your attention. Never mind if your child has poured the entire bottle of ketchup onto his plate. How can anyone side with Charlie Casserly?
Think about how we interact with each other as a society—it isn’t through larger social issues, it’s through sports.
We don’t sit at a bar and talk about environmental statistics, we talk baseball statistics. We don’t have parties where we get together and watch the crop report; we get together and watch the Super Bowl. Kids don’t play “Global Investment Strategies” in their room at night, they play Nerf basketball. And I certainly don’t get together with my wife’s family to have a Social Security discussion; we go to a Triple-A baseball games and share $5 beers.
Sports have an influence on our lives that can only be pinpointed when we examine our actions. It drives us to do crazy things and shift our priorities. Take me for example: I’ve decided it’s more important for my four-year old to learn to taunt his Yankee-loving grandfather mercilessly about their pitching woes than it is for him to learn to read. He’s only got a few more years before he starts attending games with me, and he needs to be ready. You have to prepare them for it. Reading will come with time—they have schools for that.
Sports can even inject reason and logic into unrelated situations. A high-ranking government official makes a harmful and derogatory remark about a subsection of society? Fine ‘em like the NBA does Mark Cuban. That’s right, give the Supreme Court the right to levy fines on these poor representatives of the American people. Just as it’s bad for professional sports as a business when an owner, manager or player acts out in an inappropriate way, it’s bad when our elected officials do the same. But I digress.
Though our seemingly ridiculous obsession with sports comes at a price of time and emotion, there’s always a return on our investment. Maybe it’s playing golf with your dad or your brother-in-law. Perhaps it can come from watching your favorite team win a championship so you can experience a little bit of the purest form of joy in life, which is in the moments after a team or player wins a title. Or it could be getting an autographed picture of a childhood hero for Christmas, which will, under no circumstances—even the threat of bankruptcy—be sold for personal gain.
The point is that sports has crept into nearly every aspect of our lives, often manifesting itself when we least expect it—whether in a restaurant or on a honeymoon in Mexico. And even if my wife still has that look on her face, I wouldn’t have it any other way.
For the Miami Heat to win its first NBA Championship, it needed the man who built the franchise into a contender over a decade ago. The Heat needed a monumental effort and a rainmaker to take over during the season and lead the troops to victory.
It needed Pat Riley. It needed him to fine tune his coaching, managerial and motivational skills, and to show that the old dog had the foresight to know he needed new tricks to win in this era of the NBA.
While Dwyane Wade stamped his name on the MVP trophy and became one of the best players in Finals history, Riley was the puppeteer pulling the strings on Wade’s supporting cast. By blending in fading superstars, a rising megastar, role players and cast-offs, he not only brought them together, but managed to finally bring a victory parade down Biscayne Boulevard.
And it was perhaps one of the best coaching jobs in NBA history. This championship wasn’t like the four Riley won as head coach of the Los Angeles Lakers, which boasted one of the greatest lineups ever with Magic Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and James Worthy—this was a true challenge. From bringing in Shaq, Jason Williams, Gary Payton and Antoine Walker to controversially replacing Stan Van Gundy, the pressure to succeed in South Beach grew with each passing game over the past seven months.
This championship wasn’t about redemption for Pat Riley—he doesn’t need it with his resume. It was about proving that who’s coaching still matters.
Just look at some of his work—getting Walker to play defense and not just jog three-point line to three-point line, and convincing Gary Payton to play more like a role player than “the player”, as well as come off the bench and contribute to a total team effort.
Riley got Jason Williams to play less like White Chocolate and more like a Starbucks decaf latte. He tapped Alonzo Mourning’s one kidney for more production than anyone thought possible. He managed the ego of a declining Shaquille O’Neal. And most importantly, he convinced a group of savvy veterans that Dwyane Wade should be the captain of the ship, not just a passenger.
While they were handing out awards in the post-game, they should have given Riley an honorary PhD in motivational psychology. In a sports world where so many struggle mentally with the game they play, his psychological management of this team and his motivational tactics proved that he always believes and never doubts.
There was the bowl that had been sitting in the middle of the Heat locker room throughout the playoffs, covered by a shroud of mystery. Only the players and coaches knew what was inside—and it wasn’t Stan Van Gundy’s head. Riley revealed that the bowl included over 150,000 small cut-out cards of the Larry O’Brien trophy. They signified the end goal of the team and that the Heat were composed of “15 strong”.
“People don’t know how much they wanted to win. Every day, I would bring in a bunch, dump them in, Shaq would bring them in. It was about 15 strong, the Heat, the players and their wives, after all we’d heard about team chemistry and guys not working together...it was about faith,” Riley said.
In making them believe, he convinced an eclectic group of players with varying backgrounds and ages in a cynical league of selfish athletes to come together for the ultimate goal—a championship.
The players said Riley offered all of his rings so they could win this one. Who wouldn’t want to play for that guy? How many coaches can pinpoint to their teams which day they’ll win the title?
“The great Pat Riley told me we were going to win today. He told us on 6/8 that we would win it on 6/20…Pat Riley is the best coach I ever had,” Shaquille O’Neal said amidst the celebration.
He earned the respect of his players and got them to buy into his system—perhaps the most difficult thing for a coach to do in professional sports. It showed on the court as they played defense, jumped on loose balls and consistently out rebounded Dallas—something that hadn’t been done against the Mavericks in the entire playoffs. And it showed after the final buzzer, when each Heat player individually hugged Riley to show their appreciation.
It took Riley’s kind of toughness to become only the third team in NBA history to win the Finals after being down 0-2. When the series shifted to Miami after two bad losses in Dallas, Riley changed the team’s mentality. For the next four games, the Heat played like Rambo: aggressive on defense, attacking on offense and physical on both ends, relentless and driven. In contrast, the Mavericks played back on its heels, almost trying to solve a mystery like Colombo: attempting to figure out all the angles, but running out of time at the end of the show.
In many ways, the Heat are the embodiment of Pat Riley, realizing as a group that the window of opportunity was closing, that they needed and wanted a championship more than they wanted the individual recognition. Even when it appeared the Heat couldn’t find themselves, their leader knew who they were and what they could do.
For the first time in 18 years, Pat Riley tasted championship champagne Tuesday night. And it never tasted so sweet. Maybe Pat Riley needed this, but the Heat needed him more.
“It’s not over,” said Dwyane Wade after Game 4 of the NBA Finals.
“It’s a different series now, 2-2,” Shaquille O’Neal said of the Miami Heat’s 98-74 blowout win over the Dallas Mavericks Thursday night.
Both statements ooze arrogance and confidence, spurred by the sudden and dramatic momentum swing which could be seen in nearly every aspect of Game 4. My friends used to call it “Uncle Mo” before any big game—and they’d say he was coming for a visit.
During the first two games in Dallas, it appeared that Miami was overwhelmed and wouldn’t be seeing Uncle Mo anytime soon. The Heat were stagnant on offense and defense. Shaq looked like he was closer to Dunkin' Donuts than to dunking the ball. Pat Riley looked out of his element and outwitted by Avery Johnson. The Heat bench was reduced to a cheerleading section—except there wasn’t much to cheer about.
The shift that began at the end of Game 3, the balance of power, the momentum and the confidence so desperately needed in a seven game series of this magnitude, was officially Miami’s at the end of Game 4.
The evidence of this was everywhere last night. Wade put in 36 points, giving him a total of 78 in the past two games, while playing on an strained knee—which could've just as easily been due to him carrying the Heat to the Game 3 win as it could have from Shaq falling into his legs. Without his ability to penetrate and explode to the basket, he took advantage of Dallas’ sagging perimeter defense and drilled jump shots all night as if he were shooting in an empty gym. In fact, sometimes he was that open—like the inbounds play he took with one second on the shot clock early in the fourth quarter and banked the ball in as the buzzer sounded.
But getting Shaq more involved was an important key if Miami truly wanted to get back into the series. He finally had a solid game in the Finals with a 17-point, 13-rebound double-double. Along with those numbers, Shaq dished out 3 assists by passing out of double teams to find an open man. For whatever reason, whether it was the hard foul by Jerry Stackhouse (to which Shaq said in the post-game press conference, “My impression was my daughters tackle me harder when I come home”) or his reborn ability to execute a quick baseline spin move, for O’Neal Game 4 was “The Big Motivator”.
Aside from its two superstars, Miami got nice contributions from its bench. Reserve guard/forward James Posey had 15 points and 10 rebounds in 26 stellar minutes that featured a back-breaking three-pointer with a little over seven minutes to go that pushed the Heat lead to 15. Alonzo Mourning chipped in 4 points, 6 rebounds—but his most important stat was three intimidating blocks.
Somehow Pat Riley convinced Antoine Walker to play intelligently, play defense and not hoist so many shots (he didn’t even attempt his first three-pointer until the opening moments of the second half). Seeing Walker breaking up passes and tallying two steals and a block is nothing short of miraculous—like watching a lazy friend with bad pick-up lines get a job, a haircut and a girlfriend in one day.
Even the “White Hot” Miami crowd came to the arena with a purpose, taunting Mavericks star Dirk Nowitzki with cutouts of David Hasselhoff’s face and chanting the singer/actor’s name every time Nowitzki shot a free throw. For all we know, that could have been the psychological ploy that forced Dirk to shoot just 2-14 from the field.
With its confidence rising, Miami is taking full advantage of the Mavs misfortunes. Because as quickly as Dallas built that momentum in the first two games of the series, it has been lost in the last two. Everything’s flipped. Its superstar has a case of the shooting shanks, as Shaq did in Dallas. Its coach looks confused, as Pat Riley early on in the series. And its young team appears as though they have stage fright.
The overall energy and attitude of the Heat seemed to intimidate the Mavs in Game 4. Miami’s zone defense appeared to affect Dallas nearly every time Pat Riley ran it—and the constant switching from man to zone left the Mavs scorers’ unable to get into rhythm. Due to this, the Mavericks appeared flustered and edgy; it shot just 31% from the field—including just 3-22 from three-point land.
And the Mavericks certainly won’t enter Game 5 on a high note after setting the record for lowest points in the 4th quarter in NBA Finals history with 7.
Momentum does funny things: it has Dallas licking its wounds, trying to figure out what went wrong; while it has Jason Kapono in the last minute of the game because Miami’s up by so many there’s no way the scrubs can blow it.
Momentum doesn’t care about Miami’s continued troubling pattern of turnovers, offensive fouls and overall lack of transition defense. But it does care about Dallas getting four offensive rebounds in one possession, coming away with nothing and looking intimidated.
It cares about who wants it most; not who tries to hold onto it. Momentum loves to be pursued.
