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Pat Riley led the 'Showtime' L.A. Lakers of the 1980’s

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11 Jan 2022
5 min read
Question: this slick-haired head coach led the l.a. lakers' to back-to-back nba titles in 1987-88...

Like few other peers, Pat Riley has a been a crossover basketball figure stone from one generation to another to another.

A native of Rome, New York, Riley’s national celebrity actually began with a loss; as an All-American at the University of Kentucky, Riley led the Wildcats to the national title game in 1966, which Kentucky would lose to Texas Western University, a team that sported an historic all-Black starting lineup; the seminal moment in cultural history was later revisited in the 2006 film, Glory Road.

Not that Riley was undone by the loss.  Rather, as the seventh overall pick in the ensuing NBA draft by the San Diego Rockets, the shooting guard would go on have a solid nine-year pro career, including being a key bench member of the L.A. Lakers’ 1972 championship team.

After his playing career concluded, Riley picked up the microphone for two years as a Lakers’ announcer; come the 1979-80 season, he was hired as an assistant coach for the team which would go on to win the NBA title over the Philadelphia 76ers.  

Two years’ following, when head coach Paul Westhead was fired early on in the season, Riley took over the reigns and led the Lakers to another crown, again felling the 76ers. The ’82 title was one of five Riley would ultimately win in his storied head coaching career, including three more with the “Showtime” Lakers of the ‘80’s (1985, 1987 and 1988) and one as front man for the Miami Heat in 2006; after stepping down from his head coach role following the 2002-03 campaign and moving into an executive role with the team, Riley would retake control of Heat coaching duties from Stan Van Gundy (whom he fired) midway through the ’06 season en route to defeating the Dallas Mavericks for the crown.

In 2008, Riley, a three-time “NBA Coach of the Year,” was elected to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.

After again stepping away from the bench, Riley, serving as Team President of the Heat, would oversee two more titles (back-to-back crowns in 2012 and 2013) for the franchise; in 2020, Miami would return to the NBA Finals, before falling in six games to (who else?) the Lakers.

Rekindling memories of the “Showtime” Lakers of the 1980’s, an HBO series, Winning Time, was scheduled to debut on the cable network in March of 2022, with Academy Award winner Adrian Brody playing the slick-haired Riley and John C. Reilly as team owner Jerry Buss.

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