With Heat owner Micky Arison set to be inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame this weekend and team president Pat Riley among the prior honorees slated to present him, Riley reflected on his 30 years with the organization, per Anthony Chiang of The Miami Herald.
“Micky and I had that kind of relationship back and forth, but always positive about what we’re trying to do,” Riley said. “If he didn’t like something, he would tell me, ‘I don’t think we should go that way,’ and I wouldn’t go that way. If he said, ‘Go for it. Damn right, let’s go for it,’ we had the same mentality.”
“But if you don’t take a risk — a Big 3 type risk [signing free agent All-Stars **LeBron James, Dwyane Wade* and Chris Bosh in 2010], Lamar Odom type risk or Shaquille O’Neal type risk or Jimmy Butler type risk or whatever it is — then you’re too afraid and there’s a fear of failure there,”* Riley said. “So when you make a calculated risk, he has made a lot of them with me — some of them haven’t worked, some of them have worked big time.”
With Riley at the helm, Miami has made a total of seven NBA Finals, winning three championships.
There’s more out of Miami:
While playing for their respective national teams at EuroBasket this year, Heat role players Nikola Jovic, Pelle Larsson and Simone Fontecchio are all showing out in larger roles than they’ve had in Miami so far. Ira Winderman of The South Florida Sun Sentinel cautions that their production shouldn’t necessarily indicative that they’re capable of taking a leap with the Heat in 2025/26.
There had been “strong rumbles” that they Heat were considering a trade of Simone Fontecchio, according to Marc Stein of The Stein Line. Stein notes that this was before Miami traded away Haywood Highsmith. Now that the Heat find themselves below the league’s luxury tax following the Miami deal, there is likely little urgency to offload Fontecchio.
With Nikola Jovic playing an outsized role for his native Serbia in EuroBasket, Barry Jackson of The Miami Herald considers whether Miami would be served better by starting the young forward next to Bam Adebayo over center Kel’el Ware. Jackson notes that shifting Adebayo to the four while starting Ware at the five last year proved statistically more effective than keeping Adebayo at center and starting Jovic.