Bob Ryan (of the Boston Globe) wrote a piece about Pat Riley’s transformations throughout his career. First he discusses Riley’s success with the Lakers:

“Well, I don’t know if I’ve been the same person,” he said. “I was a lot different in Los Angeles, and I think most of you portrayed me accurately in those years as a very sort of selfish, ambitious young man in a lot of ways to get whatever.”

As time went on, he did get a little more full of himself. It’s only natural. When one championship turns into four, and when two of your triumphs come over the great archrival from the other end of the country, it is probably inevitable that you’re going to change somehow.

Then, Ryan touches on Riley’s stint with the Knicks:

He came to New York as a conquering hero and with an apparent determination to reinvent himself. Left behind in LA was all that “Showtime” stuff. His Knicks were rough, tough, and rock ’em, sock ’em, and he had poster boys Patrick Ewing and Charles Oakley, plus hardscrabble John Starks. They were the antithesis of a finesse team, but they were good at what they did and Riley got them to a point in the 1994 Finals where they were up, 3-2, heading back to Houston for Games 6 and 7.

By this time Riley had become almost totally imperial. Though he never won it all in New York, his mystique was as fixed as ever, because he turned away from not just “Showtime” — how could you have a proper “Showtime” without Magic? — but full-court transition basketball (i.e. pretty basketball entirely, as did the rest of the league). Riley, it turns out, was viewed as the lead dog for almost the entire NBA coaching community. Riley was into slug and thugball, and the coaching lemmings followed him in his leap from the cliff.

The undeniable truth is that Pat Riley did more to slow down the NBA and bring on its arctic Dark Ages period than any single individual. That’s power.

Finally, he describes the Riley/Heat marriage:

He moved down to Miami, where he was invested with enormous gobs of power and money and where, with Alonzo Mourning as a marquee attraction, he delivered more of the hard-hat style of basketball, with ever-diminishing results. Things deteriorated so much that he quit a second time, retreating to the front office while allowing the rumpled Stan Van Gundy to coach the team.

He made news in the summer of 2005 when he let slip something to the effect that he wished to be more “hands-on,” at which point the general assumption was made that his return to the sideline was in the “when,” not “if” category. Said assumptions were proven correct when Riley took over from Van Gundy 21 games into the 2005-06 season.

The latest Pat Riley reinvention is to find a middle path. The Heat have an uptempo point guard in Jason Williams, but they’re not going to be “Showtime” because he’s not Magic Johnson and neither is anyone else. They have Shaquille O’Neal, but they don’t play thugball because he certainly is light years better than that. No, they are a nicely balanced basketball team that can score inside with Shaq and on outside shots and drives to the hoop by Dwyane Wade, and who during this playoff run have gotten the requisite help from the various offensive role players such as Udonis Haslem, James Posey, Williams, Gary Payton, and the One and Only Antoine Walker, who has found a team that can maximize his strengths while living with his weaknesses.

Defensively, they are an evolving work, perhaps not as great as they looked against a troubled Detroit squad, but a unit that has enough toughness to make Dallas work for everything.

Riley has matured a lot from the guy who coached the Lakers during the “Showtime” era, but he still has that recognizable slicked-back hair that helped to polarize the NBA community during the Lakers’ rivalry with the Boston Celtics. He has adjusted with the times, taking advantage of the changing winds of the NBA’s officiating and generally getting the most out of his players. The Heat are his team , culled together over the past few seasons with only goal being a NBA championship. The last phase of his quest starts tonight.