General NBA watching thread 2010-11 edition

[aquaadverse]

Originally Posted by Dirkadirkastan

His ass is grass. Enter Riley in a cape.

Nope. Not going to happen for a couple of reasons. First of all it's hard to see what Riley can accomplish on the pine that he can't accomplish from on high with a coach's come to Jesus meeting or two. The Heat aren't like a lot teams where an owner hires a coach and hires a GM and hopes they can work.

Riley hired all the coaches, the scouts, the training staff. Many of these folks have over a decade with him. How many franchises have the first coach a team had as an expansion entry a couple of decades ago on the coaching staff?

Riley has all control he needs now. He can dictate lineups and schemes and his current coach is a product of his system and is probably pretty open to not going down as the guy who screwed this up. Riley isn't going to get pressure from his owner either. Arison went to great lengths to get Riley down here. He gave him control over operations and gave him an ownership share. Arison runs a very complicated business and understands delegation. It's no accident most fans have no idea who owns the Heat.

The other reason is Riley doesn't want to coach and Wade doesn't want him on the bench either. He doesn't want the grind of travel and practices, has little left to prove and seems to relish being Red Auerbach over Phil Jackson.

The current state of the Heat is made up of objections and conditions. Erik Spoelstra has plenty of criticism quite correctly reigning on his head. Lineups and substitutions, finding familiarity with an entire team that has less than a month are objections that can be fixed. Losing players to injury, no quality interior presence and PG are conditions that aren't under his control, nor will sticking Riley on the bench change that. Think things are bad now? That's nothing like it would become with slapping Riley the messiah on top of the super-friends and having them still struggle.

Wade has been pretty vocal about keeping the great and powerful Oz behind the curtain. Reading some of the comments you would think this is it, that they will all be gone at the end of the season. It's like Lord of The Flies with a ball and hoop. Whack Spo after the injury to Miller left the Ferrari with a donut wheel spare in less than month and under 20 games played is panic, pure and simple. On the other hand, Riley playing Cheney with Erik Spoelstra as GW for awhile and playing well after the All Star break would be a lot better than panicking. Riley can descend and put his head in a bucket of ice water and talk about fighting like it's for the next breath a time or two and go back to trying to get more talent to fill in the gapping holes.