Pat Riley explains what Heat has missed and why he wrote a letter to one of his players
The Miami Heat likely benefited from the discipline required of playing inside the NBA bubble last season.
But in one ancillary area off the court — unrelated to finances — the Heat was hurt by the conditions created by the pandemic, team president Pat Riley said the other day.
Riley gave an interesting answer when asked what perspective he gained over the past 16 months living through a pandemic and playing the conclusion of the 2019-20 season inside the NBA’s Disney campus.
“It’s been hard for everybody in the world,” he said. “NBA players and staff and executives and writers, correspondents, television people, anybody who’s involved in the NBA, family or industry. It’s a challenging year from the standpoint of how you used to do your job versus how you have to do it now. But in anything in life, it doesn’t make any difference what happens to you, it’s how you deal with it and adapt.
“Everybody had to adapt immediately to being sheltered in. And then we had to come back.. [and] there were so many conditions and protocols, it just sort of took you out of any kind of comfort zone that you were used to. Now when you look back 14 months later, and everybody’s coming out of their caves, and coming back into the office or starting to make plans to go on vacation or to do things, there’s a hesitancy.”
Riley was so affected by this that he recently wrote a letter to Heat wing Andre Iguodala.
“I think one of the biggest things that we missed, and I wrote Andre a note the other day, and I almost apologized to him from the standpoint that when we traded for Dre, Jae Crowder and Solomon Hill, they arrived here on Feb. the 25th last year, and then they were sheltered,” Riley said. “We were sheltering in on March the 11th, and then they were gone for like two months.
“We’re doing Zoom things and all those one man, one coach, one mask walk-throughs and things of that nature. So the biggest thing that we lost, and I said to Dre, ‘I wish that you could have come to one of our Christmas parties. Or you couldn’t come to the family festival or a number of the team dinners or events or things that we do in this organization out in the community through our business operations and everything [to see] exactly what it’s like.’ Because we lost the connection, a real connection.”
Riley made clear that “I’m not using that as an excuse, but I think everybody sort of got a little bit disconnected, and then when you start getting around the same people you knew for years and years and years, it’s a little bit awkward from that standpoint. So now it’s going to be back to I hope what is normal, somewhat, next year.”
Riley suggested his team needs a rest after the Lakers and Heat experienced the shortest offseason in NBA history.
“When the season starts, everybody’s got more than enough time off to recharge the batteries,” he said. “And then when we come back, I’m sure there’s going to be some COVID protocols still. But they won’t be as draconian as they were. We’ll see what they are, but I think we’re on to bigger and better things.”
Mostly, Riley said, “I missed hanging out with everybody. I missed being together with them. I missed the parties. I missed the fun. I missed all the things we do as a team, and some of our guys really didn’t get to see.”
Meanwhile, the Heat continues to shrug off critics who say Miami’s NBA Finals run last season was largely a byproduct of playing on the Disney campus.
TNT’s Charles Barkley, speaking with Meadlowlark Media’s Dan Le Batard on Friday, said the success of the Lakers and Heat should be regarded as something of an anomaly.
“Listen, that’s bubble basketball,” Barkley said. “It was a bunch of bubble gangsters. That don’t count. Bubble gangsters don’t count.”
Riley wasn’t pleased to learn that the Bucks tweeted ‘this isn’t the bubble’ after Milwaukee’s first-round sweep of Miami.
“We were the best team other than the Lakers last year, and we ended up in the Finals, whether it was the bubble or anyplace else,” Riley said.
“I take pride in the fact that people will say that the Heat and its culture were best suited for the disciplines needed in the bubble. If that’s the case, then fine. Then we had a little bit of an edge. I don’t think that’s solely the reason. But we had some meltdowns in the bubble. It wasn’t easy.
“But I do recall the competitiveness in those games, and most of the games that we won with the exception of a few, were one or two or three possession games in the last five minutes. They were clutch games and somewhere we made a shot that always put us a possession or two ahead and we ended up getting wins...
“So what happened to us last year in the bubble was last year, and what happened to us this year is what happened this year and we’ll have to deal with those circumstances. So I don’t look at that as a slight. But when people want to jump on it and say something negative about it, then that’s their problem, that’s their issue.”
This story was originally published June 8, 2021 at 12:34 PM.
