Pat Riley

NBA COACHING VICTORIES Through Dec. 19 1. Red Auerbach: 938 2. Jack Ramsay: 864 3. Dick Motta: 856 4. Bill Fitch: 845 5. x-Lenny Wilkens: 828 6. Cotton Fitzsimmons: 805 7. Gene Shue: 784 8. x-Don Nelson: 730 9. John MacLeod: 707 10. Red Holzman: 696 11. x-Doug Moe: 615 12. x-Pat Riley: 600 13. Al Attles: 557 14. K.C. Jones: 522 15. x-Chuck Daly: 488 16.Alex Hannum: 471 17. Billy Cunningham: 454 18. Larry Costello: 430 19. Tommy Heinsohn: 427 20. John Kundla: 423 x--active

His eyes filled with tears. Jerry West's hands trembled as he clutched the microphone. His voice squeaked as he spoke before an attentive audience at a Manhattan Beach hotel. He and his teammates on the 1971-72 Lakers team gathered there Thursday commemorating the 40th anniversary of their championship run. West could have just marveled at the team's 33-game winning streak, which still remains the longest winning streak in professional sports history. He could have just detailed how that season provided some solace for losing in nine previous NBA Finals appearances.

Six seasons and two Laker championships have passed since Paul Westhead was fired as Laker coach, and Magic Johnson was fingered as the man who brought Westhead down. Laker owner Jerry Buss insisted at the time, and insists to this day, that he had already decided to fire Westhead even before the November night in Salt Lake City when Johnson announced he wanted to be traded. Since Nov. 19, 1981, Johnson's coach has been Pat Riley.

This was not your typical in-season coaching change, but few are as monumental. If Lakers coach Jack McKinney hadn't decided to ride his bike to a tennis date with assistant Paul Westhead on Nov. 8, 1979 the course of the team's history might have been different — and so would the course of several men's lives. McKinney had left an assistant's job in Portland to coach the Lakers in 1979 and soon installed the foundation of the Showtime era. His team was humming along at 10-4, his relationship with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar solidifying into a deep trust, when McKinney hurtled over the handlebars of his bike and struck his head on the pavement, sustaining a serious head injury.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was the most valuable player and Magic Johnson got his redemption, so what else is there to say after Sunday's happening at Boston Garden? Larry Bird thought it appropriate to put in a good word for the man who orchestrated the happening, Coach Pat Riley of the Lakers. "He's an excellent coach," said Bird. "His strategy was very good. From game to game I had to keep changing what I was doing. "They made more adjustments than we did.

Since Pat Riley came to the New York Knicks, there has been no better coach or manager in professional sports, even if he came up one game short last season. Everything began to change for the Knicks, and at Madison Square Garden, when Riley took the job as Knick coach. Dave Checketts, president of the Knicks and also interim president of the Garden now, is the one who finally got Riley to say yes in the spring of 1991.

Pat Riley, whose slick hair and elegant suits epitomized the "Showtime" style of his Los Angeles Laker teams, resigned as coach today after four NBA titles in nine seasons. Mike Dunleavy, assistant coach in Milwaukee, will replace Riley despite never having been a head coach in the league. Announcement of the move was made at a news conference by Riley, General Manager Jerry West and Dunleavy.

As sympathetic as Pat Riley may be to the striking Hollywood writers who have been walking the picket lines for the last two months, he's not looking to hire anybody to pen his speech to the Lakers before Game 6 of the National Basketball Assn.'s Western Conference finals here tonight against the Dallas Mavericks. For one thing, the Laker coach writes his own material.

There are no Pat Riley fan clubs in Boston to begin with, but after the publication of his new book, "Showtime: Inside the Lakers' Breakthrough Season," the Laker coach has the chance to join some select company in New England's affections: King George III, Bucky Dent, the Montreal Canadiens. "Boston is supposed to be the Athens of America," Riley writes in the book, which he co-wrote with Byron Laursen. "But in our experience, it's more like Beirut."

Where are all the Pat Riley detractors who said he was incompetent as a coach and that anybody could coach the Laker teams he had during the '80s? Where are they now, while the Lakers are wallowing and struggling to make the playoffs, after they had verbally run him out of town. Meanwhile, Riley seems to be doing some pretty good coaching on his own in New York. In Jim Murray's column of April 1, Jim mentions the Lakers luxuriating in the glory years when they had Magic, Kareem, Worthy, Wilkes, McAdoo, Cooper and Scott, but he forgot to mention the leader of the pack--Pat Riley.

The Lakers announced Tuesday that Bill Macdonald and John Ireland will be the play-by-play announcers for the team for the 2011-12 season. Macdonald will call the games on TV alongside commentator Stu Lantz on FS West and KCAL 9. Ireland, who had been the Lakers' sideline reporter on KCAL 9 since the 2002-03 season, will call the games on 710 AM ESPN radio alongside commentator Mychal Thompson . Spero Dedes ...

Where have you gone, Jerry Buss? If sports are a shared experience handed down from fathers to sons, it's not every dad who can give his boy the NBA's glamour franchise. As Jim Buss' first solo decision, the coach search was a Lakers landmark before it led to Mike Brown. Well, people didn't like the Louisiana Purchase, either. However it turns out, Brown didn't hire himself, making it unfortunate the sky fell on him. Actually, Jim didn't appoint himself, either, making it unfortunate the sky fell on him too. The question is not what Jim should have done, like run Brown's name past their franchise player.

Kobe. LeBron. Dwyane. Pau. Phil. Pat. The game is between the Lakers and Miami Heat on Christmas Day, but so much of the focus will be on those names. As Derek Fisher pointed out Thursday after the Lakers practice, the NBA is all about its star power. "Our game is built on a lot of our individual guys," Fisher said. "Stars and talent, rightfully or wrongfully, that's how it is. "So when you have a game that has a matchup like a Kobe Bryant and a Pau Gasol and a Lamar Odom and Dwyane Wade and LeBron James and Chris Bosh, the personalities that are going to be matching up in this game, I don't know if it can get any bigger?

Leaving out haters, for those Up to Here With Hearing About the Heat, here's what we're looking at: Just three more weeks of 24/7 Heat coverage before Christmas! With injuries, losses and LeBron James' tilt at unseating Coach Erik Spoelstra , it's been intense, or, as Heat officials could tell you if they ever spoke, an ordeal. Oct. 26: Ballyhooed opener at new archrival Boston (pratfall). Oct. 29: Home opener, routing old archrival Orlando. Nov. 11: Rematch with Celtics at home (Pratfall II)

If the ugly losses keep washing ashore on South Beach, Phil Jackson thinks a coaching change will take place for the Miami Heat. Picked to win the NBA championship by Las Vegas oddsmakers almost immediately after they brought LeBron James , Chris Bosh and Dwyane Wade into the same locker room, Miami has struggled mightily, sitting at a forlorn 8-6 after a stunning 93-77 loss at home Monday against Indiana. "I don't think it'll happen like we're talking about it tomorrow or anything like that," Jackson said of the Heat bringing Pat Riley down from the front office to replace Erik Spoelstra . "But I think eventually if things don't turn around, the weight's going to fall there where, 'We were promised this successes and we were hoping for it' and I think there'll be a real drive for the players to have some kind of change.

Kobe Bryant hates the question, hasn't really answered it at all other than a few platitudes here and there. But on Thursday, he gave a little insight into his thoughts on LeBron James and Chris Bosh taking their talents to South Beach to join Dwyane Wade on the Miami Heat. He said his first reaction was, "Wow. How did Pat Riley pull that ? off? Impressive. " Then he had another thought. "I said I've got to get my knee healthy, that's what I said.

You can disregard all those obvious reasons, such as a rough road schedule and lack of an inside game, for the Lakers' worst slump in a decade. No, the problem could well be the dreaded GQ cover jinx. The fashion magazine for men made Laker Coach Pat Riley the cover story in its January issue, which, coincidentally or not, hit the newsstands at the same time the Lakers' road losing streak hit 6 games. The Riley profile was written by former Los Angeles Herald Examiner columnist Diane K. Shah.

Pat Riley's copy of the Laker playbook, usually dogeared by now, has hardly been opened throughout the exhibition season. Not coincidentally, the new, fast-break-oriented Lakers have concluded their exhibition schedule undefeated for the first time in franchise history after beating the Cleveland Cavaliers, 135-115, Sunday night before 16,160 fans at the Forum. Dominating all challengers, good or bad, the Lakers won eight consecutive exhibitions without even a close encounter.

It's a new day in the NBA, even if it looks like a Frankenstein revival with villagers brandishing pitchforks and torches as the creature that Miami President Pat Riley put together in his basement — IT'S ALIVE! — emerges. It's a bonanza for the league, already coming off a three-year renaissance as the Celtics arose to confront the Lakers once more, with new blood rivalries (Miami vs. Celtics, Magic, Lakers, Cavaliers, Little Sisters of the Poor, et al.)

Derek Fisher and the Lakers have reached an impasse in contract negotiations, and the free-agent guard has flown to Miami to meet with Heat President Pat Riley on Saturday to see whether a deal can be reached to Fisher's liking. Fisher departed Los Angeles on Friday for Miami, said a source close to Fisher who was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter, because he wants to play for a team that has a shot at winning the NBA championship. The source said Fisher would like to remain with the Lakers and that negotiations are amicable, but that Fisher wants to explore his options, especially now that Dwyane Wade, LeBron James and Chris Bosh have joined forces on a Heat team some consider one of the favorites to win the NBA title.