Pat Riley is a man who holds ancient grudges: from back in his "Lakers" days toward Boston ("Danny Ainge should shut the fuck up and manage his own team."); against LeBron James and to some extent Dewayne Wade for the break-up of the Heatles. The concept of a Big Three was not unknown to Riles. He had a Big Twelve in the Showtime Lakers, including a Best of All Time center in Kareem Abdul Jabbar. He had the same in New York with Patrick Ewing. And his first move in Miami was to trade for dominant Big Alonzo Mourning.
But the summer of 2014 changed Riles. He deeply resented the rug being pulled out from under him with LeBron's "I'm Coming Home". He blamed D-Wade for not heading it off when LeBron was tilted. And Riley set out to target James' new team, Riley's old, old team, the "Lakers", when they met in the Bubble in the 2020 Finals. The word was planted among the pliant local pencils that that the Godfather wanted La-La Bron-Bron most of all, to beat him and humiliate him and show him that Miami didn't need him to win another championship. Jimmy Butler got hurt and we lost that series 4-2.
My theory is that it was Riley's psyche to win a championship without those troublesome, independent, extraordinarily well-paid slaves. He would do it, or attempt to do it, with "diamonds in the rough" found in abandoned fields in California auditions, selective free agents, the undrafted, and the G-League. The result: 10 straight seasons of 45 average wins, two Finals appearances (which was the sum of Barry Jackson's answer to my first email (he didn't bother to respond to the second), and which he did not need to remind me as I wrote my acknowledgement of those runs in the second paragraph of my first email to him, which he didn't read)). But now, the yawning talent disparity, the cavalier treatment of the fans for 41 desultory home games every season at full price for approximately half a team effectively, the basically .500 record when this iteration of the “Big Three” has played together, and the current spectacular unmasking of The Team That Riley Built has Jackson announcing "perhaps the end of a Heat era."
It seems to me that Riley, traumatized at being rejected by LeBron for Dan Gilbert (Oh!) went the anti-LeBron route, that he deliberately eschewed any additional Super Team building and that he convinced himself that "We have enough" with Dion Waiters, Hassan Whiteside, Tyler Johnson, James Johnson, Jimmy Butler, Justice Winslow, Bam Adebayo, Tyler Herro, Patty Mills, Delon Wright, Duncan Robinson, on and on, enough to compete with and to triumph over teams with Jalen Brown, Jason Tatum, Derrick White, Kristaps Porzingis; over another team with Jalen Brunson, Isaiah Hartenstein, Julius Randle (not healthy for the second half of the season), and OG Anunoby; over another team, defending Champion Denver with a former MVP and a top 75 all-time player; and even an exciting, young, up-and-coming team which plays pinball offense.
None of it is true but that is the path not traveled by any other team that Riley has composed. I believe Riley has deliberately chosen this path. It's not enough and it has failed and it has gotten 45 wins for 10 straight seasons and it is not good enough.
