Pat Riley’s record says it all. Four National Basketball Association championships, two Coach of the Year awards, and the best overall winning percentage (756-299) of any coach in NBA history.
In the 1980s, his Los Angeles Lakers won four NBA titles — two of them back-to-back, a feat never achieved by any other team — and made all the more sweet by the fact that they beat the Boston Celtics, the Lakers’ arch-rivals.
Those were the glory days. Kareem Abdul Jabbar and Earvin ‘Magic’ Johnson were the headlining stars at the Felt Forum, and Hollywood celebrities like Jack Nicholson were willing extras. With his regal good looks, Armani suits and dynamic presence, Coach Riley was master of all.
The University of Kentucky All-American had been a 1967 first-round draft choice for the expansion San Diego Rockets, but wound up playing with the Lakers. In the pros, it was mostly his size (he was listed at 6’4”, although he is probably an inch or two shorter) that prevented him from duplicating the success he had in college, yet Riley gained the reputation of a scrappy, smart player who was possibly worth more to his team in practice than on the court: even then, he was learning how to get the most out of those around him. He was a natural candidate for the coaching life, and had perhaps his best years as the Laker coach. But after a decade of excellence, success took its toll. Kareem retired, and the core of the Lakers team started to crack. In his book The Winner Within, Riley wrote, “On the court, we were kicking ass. In the locker room, we were a team distanced and apart.”
The cracks became a wide-open split in January 1990, when a veteran player went behind Riley’s back to management, and a front office representative stepped into a team meeting. In Riley’s eyes, his authority had been undercut.
After 20 years with the Laker organization, Riley resigned. A year later, Riley and his family moved to New York and a huge challenge: rejuvenate the long-slumping Knicks.
The New York fans and media alternatively scorned and praised the “California Coach,” but Riley managed to lead the Knicks to the playoffs in his first year. In his Thanksgiving column, reporter Pete Hamill listed Pat Riley as “one of the things that New York should be grateful for.”
Finally, by the time of the 1994 playoffs, it seemed that the Knicks had their best shot at winning the NBA championship, something they had not done since 1973. But it would be the even longer-suffering New York Rangers, who won hockey’s Stanley Cup that year for the first time since 1940, who would get the ticker-tape parade. In the final round of the playoffs, the Knicks got shot down by the Houston Rockets.
There was disappointment again just this past season, when the Knicks were knocked out of the semi-finals by the Indiana Pacers.
Pat Riley granted the Irish America interview in mid-June amid a torrent of media speculation. Word was that continuing disputes with Knicks management would have the Coach resigning, yet even the Knicks’ star player, Patrick Ewing, said he was greatly surprised when Riley’s publicist made the announcement on June 15. As Irish America goes to press, he has not spoken to the media about his leaving and there is no word yet on his future plans..
Although thought of as a Californian, Riley grew up in Schenectady, New York. His father, Lee Riley, lived with the disappointment of never making it as a major league baseball coach, and, rather than continue roaming ballparks with his wife Mary and their six children in a station wagon, he settled down as a high school coach. He was fortunate enough to have lived to see his son get drafted into the NBA.
As for Pat, he met his wife Chris, then a graduate student at the University of San Diego, shortly after that NBA draft which had sent him west. In the opening paragraph of The Winner Within, Riley says, “The first and most important team in anyone’s life is their family. And, first of all that means Chris, 23 years my wife and my wife forevermore.” Riley credits their partnership as a vital part of his success. A family therapist, she was ready with advice on how he could reach his players and unlock the “winner within.”
Pat Riley is also credited with being a master at creating success, and has long had a sideline career as a motivational speaker. In fact, a recent survey of 3,100 executives revealed that Pat Riley is one of the top five people cited as inspiring business decisions.
When I talked to him on June 12 he was considering whether or not it was time to make another lifetime decision. It was still possible for the Knicks to win, but maybe it was time for Riley to move on. Our conversation covered many topics of concern to him. What motivates him. The importance of teamwork. How society has changed since he was a kid, and his book The Winner Within, in which he documents his formula for success.
PATRICIA HARTY: I read that you wanted to create a family in sports?
PAT RILEY: My driving belief is this: great teamwork is the only way to reach our ultimate moments, to create the breakthroughs that define our careers. The only way you really get the full potential from any team is to teach individuals how to become team players.
PH: Can you tell me about your own family and upbringing?
PR: Back in the fifties and sixties, it was a whole different time with regard to people, families and values. I was raised in a family where there was discipline. We all had chores we had to do. My father was a coach, my brothers were all involved in sports, so it was that kind of household. There was a lot more respect on the part of children for their elders.
PH: So do you think that has changed?
PR: The overall attitude of individuals in this country, and primarily children and people who are involved in teams, is a little more self-centered, more oriented towards the attitude of ‘what can you do for me before I’ll do anything for you?’ type of thing.
PH: It must make it harder to coach a team, or try to get that team spirit going.
PR: Well, I’m a professional basketball coach, so I have to be a little more open and honest about what we are trying to accomplish. You have basketball players who come into this game looking to earn a great living and to make a mark for themselves. They are now professionals, they are not amateurs anymore, they are playing for something a lot more valuable than what it was in high school and college. Plus, it’s so darn competitive.
You just have to change the ways that you coach and teach to get people to do the things they don’t want to do anymore, in order to achieve what the team wants. Sometimes it is the most difficult thing, and so for me it’s very cut and dried. You draft a player, you pay him, and you tell him what you want him to do and what has to be done, and if he doesn’t get it done you have the choice to either cut the guy or you can sit the guy down. But you hope somewhere along the way you will get the voluntary cooperation from the player to be part of a team and to help make that team function.
My job as coach is to develop a philosophy that includes practice habits and pride, and you try to teach players to incorporate that philosophy into their lives, and it’s getting harder and harder to do that. But I don’t think it is any more difficult in professional basketball than it is in business right now, or than it is in school, or than it is in some families. We just have to find a way to manage.
PH: So who do you go to for motivation?
PR: Players will inspire me to inspire them, and whether or not I’m ever looking for someone to motivate me is irrelevant, because I get motivated by them.
PH: Would you say there was a moment that transformed you as a coach?
PR: I don’t know if there was one thing. There’s been a lot of plateaus, a lot of great ups, a lot of great downs [chuckles] — I look at them as great downs because in every adversity there is a seed of equivalent benefit.
I think from a coaching standpoint, maybe it happened in 1985, when we [the Lakers] were playing the Boston Celtics for the championship. We had never beaten the Celtics in eight consecutive championship finals, and it looked as though we were going to get beat by them again. I think that when you’re part of a team, a player or a coach, that you always have your back, for all intents and purposes, planted against the wall. I don’t think that’s a bad place to be, whether it just happens and you don’t even know it–or it’s something you actually create as a coach. Some people become even more successful when they’re put in adverse situations.
I do believe 1985 was the year that as a coach I had my back firmly planted against the wall, because it was a year that we simply had to win, there was no way that we could lose again to the Boston Celtics.
I think somewhere you form a real strength when you’re in those situations. We ended up winning the championship in 1985, and I learned a lot as a coach. You’ve got to constantly keep the feeling that you can win, in spite of what other people think.
PH: That was the year that Kareem asked to bring his father on the team bus, and in your pre-game talk to the players, you gave an emotional talk about your father.
PR: It turned out to be a very emotional talk, but it was reality. Coaching, to me, is defining a reality, and that’s all it is. Coaching is an interactive relationship that I have with my players. The only way that I can get a performance out of them that is going to get the result we need as a team is to tell the truth.
You’ve got to explain what’s going on in the present moment. I said earlier that players inspire the coach and I inspire them, and Kareem sort of inspired me when I saw him there with his father. It reminded me of my father and about the fathers of all the players.
We’ve all had those moments in our past when our father or teacher or coach or somebody would inspire us when it came to a time when we’d think we couldn’t get it done. And I talked about bringing that voice up from inside and listening to that voice. In order to make a point to people, you’ve got to relate to them personal experiences that you’ve been through that might help them go above and beyond.
PH: Could you tell me that story about your father?
PR: Well, it was a story about fear more than anything else, because I do think at that particular time, 1985, more than anything else, we were afraid as a team. There was some fear about whether or not we could beat the Boston Celtics, and I was relating to them that when I was about nine years old, my father told my brothers to take me down to Lincoln Heights to start me playing basketball. I really didn’t want to play basketball. I thought I was too young, and I was interested in other things.
They took me down, threw me in the gates, and I got beat up. I was embarrassed. I’d run home crying, and I’d hide in the garage. My father would ask my brothers how I played and my brothers would say, ‘He’s doing fine,’ even though I wasn’t.
One day after a couple of weeks of going down to Lincoln Heights, I was hiding in the garage and around six o’clock at night, I saw my father walk out of the back door of the house. It was dark and I could see his silhouette lit by the house lights. You talk about a nine-year-old boy being scared, when your father’s coming toward you in the garage, and you think that you’ve humiliated yourself because you didn’t want to play the game. He came over and picked me up, brushed me off, and pushed me into the house.
He sat down and was very quiet. I can remember my older brother Lee begging him, ‘Why do you make us take him down there?’ I remember that whine. ‘He doesn’t want to be there, every day we take him down there he gets beat up, he runs home, he doesn’t want us to help, why don’t we wait awhile?’ My father stood up and said, ‘The reason why I want you to take him down there is because I want you to teach him not to be afraid, and that competition simply brings out the very best and the very worst.’
Then he looked at me and said, ‘Pat, you’ve got to go back. I don’t care what you do, you’ve got to go back. You cannot stay in the garage, you’ve got to go back.’ And I went back. And I kept going back, and then one day, a great breakthrough happened for a ten-year-old boy, when I got to send some other ten-year-old boy home to his garage.
A lot of little things happen in your life that are breakthroughs, and that was a turning point for me. My father had a saying, that every now and then you come to a certain place and a certain time, you have to plant your feet and make a point about who you are and what you believe in and not worry about the consequences, not worry about the results.
It has been a war cry, and I’m going to make that point over and over again until I get the results that I want.
PH: I have to say that I found your book The Winner Within very motivational.
PR: Each and every chapter deals with life lessons — thunderbolts [dealing with the unexpected], choking, the greatest breakthroughs — whatever it is, I’ve experienced it in basketball, and I think everyone else in life, in their business, in their careers, and even in families, have experienced the same thing on some level.
It really is a book about an individual, me, and also a team, the Lakers, that goes through this cycle together, innocently to start and then it begins to take on a life of its own, and you go through all of these different experiences of selfishness and having to develop covenants with one another, having your setbacks and having your opportunities for great, great, great moments.
After the great moments, you always know there is going to be some complacency and selfishness. Then after that, usually there are moments that will allow you to have a career-best effort and to go above and beyond that. Once you’ve had your greatest year, you wonder if you can go above that, and when you can, that’s mastery, and when there’s mastery, there’s challenge — it really never stops.
Then one day the core begins to crack, and there’s no more magic in that team anymore or with whatever it is — you get burned out, you get tired of the whole thing and you leave your job and that’s what life is about.
Life is simply about whether or not we can get the most points in our life, whether we can accept, adapt and change. When change raises its beautiful face, you adapt to it, you embrace it, you go with it, you don’t fight it. My instincts have always told me that when you start to see it coming, you don’t fight it, you go with it, maybe that’s why….[pause].
PH: …It’s very hard, isn’t it, to change? I mean not to want to simply hang on, to stay with the family even if it has turned into an abusive relationship.
PR: It’s a sanctuary. It’s your place where in spite of how difficult it is, you feel like it’s going to be harder if you chose to go in another direction. But when it’s really bad, when you’re pressed, or depressed, or whatever, and you’re feeling miserable, then you’ve got to embrace the inner voice, you’ve got to embrace the sign of change.
When it comes, you’ve got to go after it. I’ve always found that the people who go out there and make that change fare better and feel much better about themselves.
PH: You have said that a year before you got the coaching job with the Knicks you had a feeling that you were going to get it. But did you ever think that the team would be so successful so fast, in your first year?
PR: When I left the Lakers and took a year off, I knew the next place that I wanted to coach was in New York. They were a team I had heard that was hungry, and there were a lot of players at that particular time that didn’t like the image of what the Knicks were about and didn’t like their performance as a team and wanted more out of their career.
The reason why the team turned around so quickly is because the players simply decided to get out of themselves, at least temporarily, and get with the program.
All I brought with me from Los Angeles was credibility. The players looked at me and they said, ‘Well, if this guy is part of five world championship teams, maybe he knows what he’s talking about.’ So there was a trust early in my relationship with New York and with the players and it manifested itself into a great effort.
We did turn it around quick, and I think what happened here in New York more than anything else was that people felt there was a chance. People, fans, writers, players, management — anybody connected with the Knicks felt like now we’ve got a chance to win the championship. Once you can create that environment, I think you’re on your way to great things.
You can never guarantee that you’re going to win. But once you can guarantee an environment in which there will be respect and a great work ethic, then I think the players have a chance.
PH: Is there still a chance that the Knicks can win?
PR: Yes. I always believe that. I don’t care what the situation is.
To me, in sports, the difference between winning and losing is minute. It isn’t always just talent. Everybody says they can’t win when they [other teams] have more talent. I don’t believe that. I believe in hustle and hard work, and I believe in being part of a team and the spirit of teamwork. I believe these are special talents that become part of the equation other than just talent, and I think that the team still has a chance to win. As long as they feel like that, then they will have a chance.
PH: I read where you said that to win a championship there has to be sacrifice.
PR: You read in the Bible, that one of the great universal truths is that you can only receive what you’re willing to give. As I mentioned earlier, one of the most difficult things you’re ever going to get a player to do is to do the things they don’t want to do, in order to achieve what the team wants.
Anybody can win. I’ve been winning my whole life, but I’ve been playing at a certain level, and I’ve been losing my whole life. If you’re in sports, you’ve got to understand that losing is just as much a part of the game as winning. In life, you’ve got to understand that failing is just as much a part of your life as success is. You’ve got to deal with both, but there will always come a point in your life when you have a chance to be the winner. Everybody gets their chance to be the winner. In order to do that, you the person, the player, have to develop an attitude. The attitude of a winner is simply the most important thing that anybody is going to develop in their life, what it takes to be part of a team. I think that’s what we worked on more than anything else.
Yes, you have to sacrifice, to me that’s academic. You’ve got to develop the skills to know exactly what it is your teammates want out of the sport. When you know what your teammates want, it is your job to help them get out of that sport what they desire. If you’re at the point where players on a team are trying to help other people become successful, help other people make more money, help other people get more rewards, and once these people become more and more successful, the team becomes more and more successful, then theoretically, the Bible says you’re going to get more out of life than you’ve ever wanted in your life. To me, that’s one of the most important formulas to try and teach, and one of the most difficult to get across.
PH: You’ve said that Earvin “Magic” Johnson has that team spirit.
PR: Yeah, some people have it. The great book says that there is always one person that can make a difference. The greatest person in the history of mankind hung himself on a cross to make a difference, and it’s the same in life. If there is somebody out there who believes, simply believes, and has that conviction deep inside of him, that one person can make a difference.
Earvin Johnson had the skill to play, but he also had the other skill that was innate. That skill was that he was going to help everybody else on that team get out of the game what they wanted. In the long run, he got out of the game what he wanted. He was the reason why we had such great success, and great camaraderie and great spirit with the Lakers over ten years, because he kept it all together
PH: Magic said that when he couldn’t talk to even his family about his HIV, he thought he could talk to you.
PR: Yeah, we talked. It was a tragic, tragic day for Earvin, and for me and for everybody that had been around him. But like the man he is, he stared people right in the face. He went on national television, unlike any other sports hero really ever did, and announced to the world that he was HIV positive and announced that he was going to retire. He didn’t try to hide it. Since then, he has embraced it, he has tried to help raise money to help other people. Even though he is afflicted with that disease, he tried to get around it. He has always, in all walks of life, tried to find ways to survive.
PH: Has basketball changed a lot over the years? It seems like it has, just in terms of the size of the players.
PR: It used to be a different game 20 or 30 years ago, from the standpoint that it was a lot more individual-oriented, there wasn’t as much scouting, there wasn’t as much technology. Usually each team had one coach, practices were not as structured, there wasn’t the whole concept of weight training and nutrition and trying to build the best specimen of a basketball player. From that standpoint, it has changed dramatically.
The athlete has become better. Back in the sixties, they were always looking for basketball players, and hoping those players would become better athletically. But now what they develop are athletes, first and foremost, and from that we start training them to play basketball. The game is so much quicker and better and bigger from an athletic standpoint, and it’s changed the strategy of the game, too.
PH: There are not too many Irish players out there anymore, are there?
PR: There are still a few guys who get on the floor [chuckles].
PH: Name them!
What would you say you have in common with coaches like Chuck Daly or Mike Dunleavy?
PR: I think maybe that heritage, that culture, and that background, being raised an Irish Catholic. I went to Catholic school, went to church every day, was an altar boy, St. Joseph’s Academy–I feel that all provided me with the right upbringing. Most of my coaches early in my career were Irish.
What, to me, the Irish are all about is that there was tremendous pride, there was a great work ethic, and there was a great discipline that came from that. I sense it in Chuck Daly, I sense it in Mike Dunleavy, and in other coaches that I have known in the past who are of Irish descent. Born out of that Irish upbringing, too, are just values. The values of doing right, knowing the difference between right and wrong; it’s very simple, very cut and dried. And I sense that in those coaches.
PH: As for the media, what about the negative way the press seems to portray things? Has that changed over the years?
PR: Yes, I do think the media has become a microscope. There’s very little objectivity anymore across the board in the press. I’m not saying there are not writers out there or journalists and editors and publishers that have a real understanding about their art form and their industry and what they’re looking for, but it has changed over the years.
I think journalists have been inspired by the fact that negativity and being controversial, and exposing people and humiliating and mocking people can be rewarding. When you condone that kind of journalism by rewarding it with and institutionalizing it with Pulitzer prizes and contracts, then you’re going to continue to get that. That’s just the nature of our society today. If people want to hear the bad and they [the media] want to expound upon it, they want to get inside of people’s lives, and break them down and humiliate them, if they can. That’s the way it has been for the last 20 years, in sports, in politics, in life. The headline of any major newspaper across this country is probably going to have some negative connotation: war, crime, drugs, murder, corruption, whatever. It’s just the way our society is, and it’s too bad.
PH: Do you think it’s also in terms of the team owners’ demand for publicity? It seems to me an awful lot of time to give the press, 45 minutes in the locker room before a team goes out to play.
PR: That’s okay. There are certain guidelines in the NBA. To open up the locker room 45 minutes before you start your meeting is okay.
Players are counseled, they don’t have to talk to the press before the game, and if a press person doesn’t have something specific to ask a player then we don’t want them in the locker room. You do have to deal with the media, you cannot avoid it. The media is an animal that has to be fed every single day, and if you don’t feed it, it’s going to feed on its own.
For the most part, I’ve always called the media the peripheral opponent. You’ve got to prepare for the press, and know what to say to the press — you can’t attack the press. The only problem I’ve ever had with the press is if they write something that simply is not true. Then you have the right to get a retraction. If they’re writing hypothetical opinions about your game or about you as a coach or if they’re using the old bail-out on the sources, that I don’t appreciate much. But you’ve got to deal with them and you’ve got to work with them.
PH: Coming from Ireland, where there is very little professional sport, I cannot get over the amount of money that is paid to players in this country. I think the word sport should be taken out of it.
PR: It’s an industry. Even in other parts of the world, sports has been, and always will be, an industry where there will be compensation. It’s going on in Europe right now, and in many countries, where players are getting very good salaries playing professional basketball or soccer.
That’s the great thing about living in America. The American free enterprise system is the greatest system in the world. If there is a talent that has a service to supply a team, then he’s going to get what the market will bear. Salaries are outrageously high, but there are a lot of owners and sponsors making a tremendous amount of money off the talent of those players, and so those players should be compensated.
PH: How do you keep all of this success from going to your head?
PR: There isn’t any one way. You sort of grow through it. I think early in your life when you have success, you have a tendency to be affected in a more negative way by it than you would later on. You find out there is no sure way to happiness. Success is not the way to happiness, money is not the way to happiness, awards and rewards are not the way to happiness. I think people that understand this, and are happy in their lives and in their careers, are people who understand and have a passion for something that is significant, being part of something that matters.
If anybody is out there chasing money and position and power, and all of the things that might come with success, then most likely it will go to their head, they won’t be happy. I’ve always tried to define this as a sense of a mission. Each and every person has to have a mission in life. There has to be a desired state you want to get to. Once you get there, that will continue to motivate, inspire and fuel you. I try to keep it simple.
PH: In terms of giving back to the community, I understand there is an organization that helps kids you are involved with.
PR: There are a number of programs my wife and I are involved in. One is a program called DARE, Drug Abuse Resistance Education. It’s a program that started out in Los Angeles that takes police officers right into elementary schools and starts getting the young child familiar with a uniformed officer in a friendly, educational way. It’s a 17-week program where these police officers develop very positive relationships with these kids and talk to them about the perils of drug abuse, and teach them how to raise their self-esteem and deal with peer pressure.
It’s a program we started in Schenectady, New York, and brought to Central Park Senior High School there. Since then, it has really mushroomed into a program in Upper New York State, where a tremendous amount of kids are benefiting from this particular education.
PH: You were linked with Amnesty International for a while?
PR: In the late eighties I went on an Amnesty International tour on behalf of Reebok International. It was with Bruce Springsteen, Sting, Peter Gabriel, Tracy Chapman — a number of artists and I went around the world one summer to bring to the attention of people the tremendous tragedies that are going on in third world countries and other countries in terms of human dignity. It was a great tour.
PH: Have you ever been to Ireland?
PR: I have not. I have to get over there. That is going to be one of our trips in the near future.
PH: Do you know when your ancestors came over or where they were from?
PR: No, not really. I think it was back in the late 1800’s.
PH: The O’Riley’s are mainly from Cavan or Longford. The word “Riley” used to mean money.
PR: I got pretty lucky then.
PH: Thank you Coach Riley. Beir Bua.
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published in the July/August 1995 issue of Irish America. ♦
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