Pat Riley has been involved and included in several golden moments of the NBA’s storied history as a player, coach, and executive combined, but he admitted that the Miami Heat’s marvelous playoff run this year is truly one for his books.
“I’ve seen a lot of things in my career, but I have not experienced a year like this in a playoff run,” the 78-year-old Riley said in his Tuesday press conference, via Barry Jackson of the Miami Herald.
Hammered by injuries and inconsistencies for the entire regular season, the Heat were counted out by almost all as they finished at the dead last slate of the playoff contention. They had to go through two Play-In games just to obtain a ticket to the postseason stage, and the rest was history.
Viewed by many as huge underdogs, Miami was unfazed by the towering odds as they eliminated the title giants in Milwaukee Bucks on their first-round set in a historic upset. They went on to outlast their old rivals in New York Knicks in six games of the second round to earn a rematch with the Boston Celtics in the Conference Finals.
After going up with a commanding 3-0 series margin, the Heat evaded a humiliating blunder against the C’s who forced a Game 7 and became just the second eighth-seeded club team in league history to reach the NBA Finals.
Though the Heat came up short in writing a beautiful ending to their Cinderella run story as they were ousted by the Denver Nuggets in a five-game championship bout, Riley is more than delighted and impressed by how they were able to pull off an unimaginable playoff finish.
“I really thought against Denver, as great a team as they were, when we got that second game, I said, ‘we got a real shot. This is going to happen.’ And that was it. That was our last win,” the Heat front office bossman added.
“But we had a great year. I’m not going to go back on this season and say anything else other than kudos to our players, to our coaching staff, to everybody that was able to put us through one of the most exhilarating, exhausting, stressed … I’m still sleep-deprived. But that’s when I start watching Garfield in the middle of the night.”
