Pat Riley’s Top Five Quotes Describing Miami Heat’s 2007-08 Season
November 16 07
I’m an unabashed Pat Riley fan. The Gucci sideline boss entertains with his slick appearance, opportunistic career moves, and off-the-cuff remarks.
With the Heat off to a disastrous 1-7 record, ‘Riles’ mouth has been working overtime. The legendary sideline boss has been calling out all his players-even the biggest stars are getting criticized.
With the season only two weeks old, I decided to list Riley’s top five zingers of the season. His comments are funny, insightful, and over-the-top. Enjoy.
#5) On Shaquille O’Neal’s injury problems:
- “If he wants to give back $10 million and play half a season, then fine."
#4) On Antoine Walker’s lack of conditioning, which resulted in the Miami media calling the shoulder-shimmy portly:
- "I just know that he can’t sustain a practice of ours ... that’s why his Achilles’ goes on him. To me, it’s the overall conditioning and conditioning the right way. We need his offense, his versatility and stuff, and what I have to do is I have to swallow my pride, my coaching pride here and not just sort of cut off my nose to spite my face."
#3) On altering the Heat’s line-up after a loss to the Sonics:
- "It might take a real shakeup. It might take a massive shakeup. It might take just absolute lineup changes. People who don’t think they should ever be benched might have to come off the bench for a while, just to turn this whole thing around."
#2) On the players having some pride:
- "Unless you feel like you have something at stake or something to lose as a player, then things won’t change. If you don’t feel like the Heat mean something to you ... you have to have a real meeting with yourself about what you care about. I don’t see a team that really feels like they have anything at stake here. They come in, they play, they get beat, they go home, they go out into the night."
#1) On Riley, himself, coming out of retirement at 62 years old:
- “With an old hip, I’m 62 years old, I can’t (expletive) see, but I could play better than some of my guys tonight,"
What Riley comment is your favorite? Get at us in the comment box with your thoughts.
Click here to read and subscribe to Oly Sandor’s NBA Blog.
