January 24, 2024 • 40 mins
In Part 1 of Episode 2 of "The Why with Dwyane Wade," Dwyane sits down with fellow Hall of Famer Pat Riley for an intimate discussion. The two Heat icons talk about the time Riley had to play 1-on-1 vs a streetball legend to keep his spot of the Lakers roster, how Riley first learned to be a leader and the reasons he decided to draft Dwyane in 2003.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:16):
Welcome to the Why with Dwyane Wade.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
I am honored to be able to sit and have
a conversation with a legend icon named pat Riley ra Else.
Thank you for taking this moment, Taking this moment.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
I'm into my office here, my presidential office downstairs. Entertain everybody.
Just tear it apart and set up. You and I
look good. Where are you up there? I feel good.
This is the main chair right here, pat It's a
good chair. It's twenty one years old. But Dwayne, anywhere, anytime.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
We can sit down chat, you know, yeah, anytime. So
last time we seen each other. Let's start there. Yeah,
it was it was that the Hall of Fame, Yes
it was. It wasn't your first time there. But question
to you when you were able to have players You've
had a lot of players going back to magic, you know,
Kareem and James. When you've had all these players who
(01:10):
have these great careers and then they end up in
a Hall of Fame moment, how does that feel from
your eyes sitting there in the seas watching your players
up there.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
You know, they're so unique, all of the players that become,
you know, Hall of Fame players, they're unique. Athletes, very
very talented, you know, all of them high IQ players,
but all of them contrary to maybe public opinion, and
they're grinders too, They really grind. And so all of
(01:42):
the people that I knew that I coached that made
it into the Hall of Fame, I knew their past.
I knew their history, where they come from and maybe
what it was like. Maybe I didn't live it, but
I knew it. And to see them up there, it's
such a sake moment for the individual that even family
(02:03):
members don't understand. And it's the pinnacle. So if there's
a legacy, and I don't really believe in legacies, really,
I think, no, I don't. That's a narrative by somebody
else who wants to create legacy. I understand. I've been
part of teams that have legacies, and I've been around
(02:24):
players who are you know, have a legacy. But when
you're standing there at the Hall of Fame and I'm
watching I gave a speech, you gave a speech was incredible,
and it brings tears to my eyes because I know
that's the last thing that we sort of do in
getting the acknowledgment and the recognition for a career, but
(02:48):
not just a career for a life, because those people
who elect you into the Hall of Fame don't know
what you had to do to get to the first level.
The first level, right, And once you get to the
first level and you get recognized, and you're hungry, you see,
is this all I got to do to be great?
Or is this all I have to do to be recognized?
(03:10):
Is play basketball? And then we get better and better
and better, and so that final recognition is, uh, it's
one that you know, very few people have, and you
have one. I have one, you know, but all the
players that we hang from the rafters here is just
an incredible feeling to see, you know, to see I
get very melancholy when I when I listen to the
players that I coach speak and it was wonderful. You know,
(03:35):
it does actually feel like that.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
Like when I took the stage and I took a
minute just to look out, and I was like, it's
gonna be all the great moments in life, but from
basketball and everything I put into this sport, this is
this is the last moment like this. And I just
kind of like took that deep breath and took it in,
you know, right.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
And and that's what I've noticed, you know, over the years.
I remember when I went in, uh, and I love
him to death, and we always used to have have fun.
And so they gave us seven minutes. You had a
seven minute speech, that's all you had. There was no
teleprompter back then. And so I was the very last
one of eleven that that gave speeches that night. Wait,
(04:15):
yours was seven minutes? No, oh, I had I had
it at seven. And then Dick by Tal, who I
loved the death, was right before me. He went, so
I'm going with my seven minute speech here and uh.
And you know, Dick was great and he went off
(04:35):
and uh and had a great speech. And then when
I went up there and I looked at the audience,
was three last. I was last. Yeah, so like were
last last, And and so I messed my speech up.
I didn't really give a great speech. I had a
good speech, but then I messed it up because I
started to go rogue. You don't want to do that.
(04:58):
At the Hall of Fay. You have that blue guard
out there. You had you had your blue card, my
blue card right there. I had like everything I was
going to say in order. I had it, you know,
thank you, that's it. Just thank you to everybody. And
then I went off in which I had a tendency
to do when I spoke to the team. We're just
divert but it's it really is a special a special place,
(05:23):
and and so there's not much more you can say
about it. You know, I look at it as you know,
the final thing for me in my career, but you know,
as a coach. But you know, I continue on.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
You know, yeah, are there glaring like characteristics when it
comes to players that can be capable of been on
that stage one day that you look that you look
for when you're you know, trying to build team around
a certain kind of talent.
Speaker 1 (05:51):
What are those characteristics? Well, I think you see it
almost immediately. I mean, I mean I think players seeing
other players. I think, uh, you know, gms and presidents
that the draft you know, are sign I think you
see it it being incredible talent. You see that. And
(06:13):
then when when the whole package is is refined and
hone and a player needs two or three years of
experience in the league, even if they're talented, you know,
you see something unique. So the one thing that always
you know, for me, you know, was you know, the
(06:33):
integrity that a player had in getting better, would they
would they really work to get better. I remember the
first year that you came here as a rookie, and
I remember stand working with you from half court to
each elbow to each elbow, working on your handle, behind
the back, whatever it is, going left, going right, and
pulling up on that jumper, going all the way and
(06:55):
just over and over and over. And so you know,
once you see that in a player where he's already great,
he's already gifted, he's already talented. I saw you, you know,
you know, in the Marquette game, and then you arrived.
You arrived in the second year. He got hurt, but
you really arrived in the finals. That was the breakthrough.
(07:18):
And so every great player has a has a real
breakthrough moment when their back is so against the wall
and you said, I'm not going out like this. You
find out, yeah, you have scored fifteen in a row.
But that was a magical time. And that's why I
always say that at that time, in those moments, every
(07:41):
player is the greatest player in the world. Over a
period of two months, the playoffs, six weeks whatever it was,
and that's where you had landed at that time, your
third year, the third year the greatest player on the
planet man, and everybody knew it.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
I get those text messages from you before games and
you it'll.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
Start with B I W. Yeah, b I W. Set
me right though. You know that that gives you a mindset.
You don't have to give a long text to a player.
Most of the time a player look at a long text,
they just want to read it. Yeah, I think, But
like the B I W. Best in the world. That's
the responsibility of those initials. For me.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
It wasn't just go out there and score a lot
of points. What I what I look at is best
in the world. To be that, so many other things
that I have to bring to the game and bring
to my teammates. And so I took pride in those
those street letters because it was like, all right, like
I need to be a leader. I need to I
need to defend and that you know, I need to
do more than just you know, highlight reel.
Speaker 1 (08:43):
And so I took a lot of a lot of
pride in those letters. It all comes, Dane, Uh, the
process of real leadership, and it's very simple, you know,
leadership is an interactive relationship, you know, whereby you get
put in the position you could hired, players vote you in.
(09:05):
You just rise that position and you take it and
to get a result. That's what leadership is. It's an
interactive relationship whereby you do these things to be in
that position, but we get a result, and that result
usually is winning on your part. And so, but to
be able to grow and to smooth all the edges
(09:26):
off of your game and your personality the first two
or three years in the league. You arrived probably in
the third year where it was complete and it lasted
for the rest of your career, and you made adjustments,
and you had to make adjustments throughout your career for
the personnel that we had coming in. And so even
though your best years were your best scoring years were
after Shack left, you know, I mean the money and
(09:52):
the MVP years, those were the I call the real
MVP years. We just didn't have the kind of team
that we needed.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
Yeah, you know, no, I'm not gonna even go there.
I was going to go to my team that I
was having a ball and knowing you ain't got a
chance in a lot of games. I remember one game
we're playing the Lakers, and I will have you know,
Earl barn was my center and I had, you know,
these kind of guys and Kobe looked at me. They
was trapping me, and I was like calling for help,
and he just started laughing at me. He was like, yeah,
you're about to go through it, you know, like go
(10:20):
through iut what I went through. Good luck and that helps.
It does absolutely. It doesn't humble you. I mean it
makes you more angry. I mean you get you would
be seething, you.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
Know, and and well I can't do it all, but
I do need a little bit of help. And they
gave you as much as they could. They could always
give you what their level of talent was and what
I allowed them, you know, to do around you, you know,
as a coach. So some of your favorite years too.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
You know, like everybody thinks on outside that the championship
years automatically has to be a favorite, But some of
those years where you're playing with guys who are maybe
not at that level that you know, like a Lebron Shack,
those become some of your favorite seasons because you get
so much more out of those times. You squeeze all
the juice out the limit and those teams and you see,
you learn a lot about yourself, you see a lot
(11:12):
of growth in your teammates. And so sometimes you walk
away like, you know what, we didn't win, but this
was a successful year from that step right.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
Well, as you said, you know, you squeeze the lemon
you get exactly what's inside of them eliminated and uh.
And I always used to use that analogy that if
you squeeze the player when there's pressure, you get exactly
what's inside also and you don't want lemonade and uh.
(11:41):
And so pressure has a tendency to change over the
course of a career a season, and then especially when
you go through adversity like you went through, won the championship,
separated your shoulder surgery, you know, rehab, the Olympics, you
know all that stuff. And then you know we draft. Yeah,
(12:01):
I love Mike talent and and I wanted to keep
him when we got the Big three, but uh, but
we had to move him and Mike came in. But
but that team was where you could almost use it
as a canvas and how how are you going to
get to the next level? And I think that team
(12:23):
taught you how to sort of get to the next
level also by having to share the court.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
So you walk in a lot of rooms nowadays, and
you've been doing it for a very long time, and
you talk about like leader, right, A lot of people
talk about leading and being a leader. How do you
actually do that? How do you actually take that first
step to say, you know what, I'm going to lead.
I'm going to stand up in front of a group
of men, women, and I'm gonna I'm going to be king.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
I'm going to be leader. How do you do that?
It's an attitude first, I mean, and it's born out
of I mean, I was a leader. I was always
a guy that you know it was on the bench
as a player. So I knew how to follow leaders,
I knew how to take direction. I knew how to
(13:08):
sort of deal with my role. So I learned a lot,
you know, about not being a leader or seeing what
leaders really do. Coaches and players in my career until
I became a coach, and so I was always good
at clinics. So when I went to a clinic, I
was good. I could teach drills, I could talk to kids,
(13:30):
and so had I had this inside of my brain
about x's and o's and moving things around, and I
remembered what coaches used to say to me and stuff
and so, But when Jerry West pushed me through the
door in nineteen eighty one, November ninth, or whatever it was,
in nineteen eighty one or eighteenth, and he said, he
(13:51):
said to me, he said, this is you, this is yours.
You know, I'm going to be the head coach of
a one hundred million dollar franchise. And Jerry Buss was
very he was saying what Patton never coached a day
in his life, or and things like that. So when
he pushed me through the door, and I went home
(14:12):
that night and I said, Chris, I'm going to coach
the Lakers for the next month until they find somebody else.
I said, I don't know. I'm gonna say to him tomorrow.
And she said, you know, why don't you keep it simple.
You know, Chris is a prayer warrior, you know, and
so you know, we've been together fifty five years. And
(14:32):
she said, house divided against itself surely will not stand.
That's what she said to me start there, which is
a biblical urse, obviously. And because we were in disarray
and dissension and all that stuff at the time, and
that you're either with me or against me. You're either
with us or against us. So that's the message that
I just walked right in with that message. And then
(14:54):
I started to talk about where we had to go.
And and so I always believed Wayne that when you're
in a position of leadership as a coach, I always
had to figure out what I was going to say
to the guys, you know, the next day, you know,
(15:15):
pre practice, post practice, pregame, halftime. I thought about all
these things. I used to write down little words about Okay,
this would be a good little place to start, maybe
at halftime if we're up or down. So you got
to have something to say to him that might resonate
with him. Some won't like it, some will. And then
when you go directly at somebody, which I didn't have
(15:37):
a problem doing that because I think it was the truth,
and I was criticism, constructive criticism, but a lot of
players would resent it. But I felt that I had
to get to that truth. I remember when Zau when
I was coaching Zoe, and I was pushing them real
hard in practice one day, and so was the best.
(16:00):
He never said he worked hard, so I shouldn't even
went after him, but I went after him one day,
and uh not in a real negative way, but I
went after him hard because I wanted to motivate him,
to motivate the other guys. And so he gave me
the fu. Everything comes to a silence, you know, in
(16:24):
the practice. We're over at Basal at the time. That's
when we played the Miami Arena and uh, I looked
at him, and he looked at me, and he said
to me, he said, should I go? I said, where
should I leave the practice floor? I said, you're right.
So he walked into the locker room and on the
(16:46):
way out, I said, I said, I yelled at him.
I said, Zo, if you ever say that to me again,
that's fine. I just want you to teach me something
as to why you said f you to me. Teach
me why I can take it. And he came into
my office after that and he would he would tell
me exactly what he thought as a leader that I
(17:06):
was doing that was disrupting the players. So I listened
to them, you know, like the conversations I used to
have with you guys. Yeah, you got a funny story
about you, but I won't tell it now. But you
got to have something to say what I had stuff
to say every day, you know, so you got to
have something to say as a leader every day to
(17:27):
your troops, but not to overwhelm.
Speaker 2 (17:38):
What do you think about all these things that have
come out about your motivational speeches? Like some of them
are real, some of them are not. Like people say,
you've tab bags over your head, You've they're all real. Yeah,
I dunk my head in the water bowl thing.
Speaker 1 (17:58):
But I think I would do them to get their
attention one, because you know, it's hard to keep a
group of guys' attention for eighty two games for THEESUS
nine months and practices and everything, and so every now
and then or to make a point. You know, I
can remember, and this came from Jimmy Johnson. You know,
(18:19):
I remember I brought I got I brought a two
by four by twelve into the locker room. Four You
get this from I don't know, I got no, no,
And so I brought the two by four in the
locker room and I placed it down. All the guys
were ready, because we had a rule. You had to
be taped, ready, dressed and everything ready. And then you
(18:41):
got to rush out of there under the court, and
so I they all looked at the two by four
and I got on the two by four and I
walked across it without falling off it and balanced myself,
walked right across it, and I said, well, somebody else
can come up and walk. And the couple guys came
(19:02):
up and walked across and they laugh. I could do
it too. I said, what if we put that two
hundred feet in the air that now is spanning two buildings.
Two hundred feet in the air changes, it changes the
whole thing. It's called fear. I'm not doing that here.
It's easy, but up here is where you have to play.
And so you know, my whole theory about that is
(19:25):
that you can play on the floor. But if you
want to beat Dwayne, or you want to beat Michael,
or you want to beat Kobe, or you want to
beat any of these guys, you got to meet him
at the rim. You got to get up there at
the rim and meet him there. Otherwise you're going to
dunk on you embarrass you. But also a subtle message
was sent about you meet somebody at the rim, what happens,
(19:50):
I mean, what happens it's a collision, man. Yes, I
had one rule, I said, I said, if you meet
him at the rim and you take somebody out, you
got to go out with him. You don't want to
hurt anybody. But you got to meet him at the rim, Michael,
you got to meet him at the rim or it's over.
And so that's why playing up here, playing on two
(20:14):
by four by twelve, everything down here, it up there.
So anyway, I would think about some of these things,
and I would I would talk to either stand or
I talked to, you know, to Bobb or somebody, and
I say, you know, what do you think, Oh, that'd
be great, go ahead and do that. Bobviously that's stupid.
He be stupid. They're gonna laugh at you. I said, well,
(20:34):
maybe they need a laugh or something, you know like that.
But I remember ours with you. But I'm not gonna
get into that any know.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
When when the cameras were off, we were talking going
back to your Laker days for a minute. When the
cameras were off, we were talking about Jerry West, who
you referenced a lot throughout your playing career, obviously going
into coaching, but we talked about one of the main
pillars of this he coach and it's the best condition, right,
(21:02):
And so you talked about how as a player you
had to make sure that you were in top shape
and condition, and a lot of it was to prepare
the other best players, which is Jerry West, to be ready.
Can you talk about that, because now I know where
we got all this conditioning from and.
Speaker 1 (21:18):
All this Well that's one of it. But the other
thing was, you know, you know, it's the fight or flight,
you know, syndrome. Because I had tremendous fear that I
wasn't going to survive and have a job. So there
were no no cut contracts back then except for Stars,
so I never had a guaranteed contract. And so I
(21:39):
was told by Bill Sharman when he came to coach
the Lakers in seventy one seventy two, he came over
from the Utah Stars in the AVA and of course
you know he's a former Celtic and he brought Casey
Jones with him, and Jerry West calls me on the
phone and said said, I can't believe that Jack can cook.
Went and hired Bill Shearman and Casey Jones, who beat
(22:02):
me six times in the finals. In Boston, you know.
So this was like the Boston Celtics and Red Auerbach
coming to coach the Lakers, and so he was really
upset about it, but he realized how good, great a
coach that Bill was. So Bill sees me in the summer,
calls me in for meeting and he says, look it,
I don't know how this is going to go. You know,
(22:23):
I'm thinking my careers over with the Lakers. He said,
but if you will come to training camp and if
you win the mile he used to have a mile race,
and then you rent all the sprints and you win
all the suicides, and you play defense against Jerry and
Gail Goodrich and Jim McMillan every day hard in Elgin Baylor.
(22:46):
He said, if you do that and show me that,
he said, I think you can make the team and
help us as a defender. And so that whole summer
that's what I did. I got in the best shape
of my life, and I didn't. I realized that I
wasn't in great shape, and then I got into the
best shape of my life. I went to training camp,
I accomplished all those things, and I made the team.
(23:07):
And so I said, if this is all I have
to do to make the team, then I'm going to
do it. And you know what happened. The residual reward
of that was I didn't play for the first six
or seven games, and then I started to play. He
called my name because I was in shape, and he
sent me after a Fraser. He sent me after all
(23:29):
of these guys Aroll Monroe, and you know, it's like
meeting somebody at the rim. My job was to survive.
So I manhandled them and they used to let your
hand check back in the day, and even though they'd
still score on me, I would do things by my
conditioning always kept me in the game that he got
me into the rotation. I became part of what they
(23:52):
called in seventy one seventy two the Magnificent seven. I
was with Flynn, Robinson and myself. So that is why
I carried that with me best condition And but you
know as well as I do, you can't. You could
not have played at the level you played and the
way that I coached you or anybody else coached you,
(24:12):
unless you were in top ship. You just couldn't. You
couldn't be efficient, and you were the best conditioned athlete
you know, one of them that we've ever had here
and so, and the results showed that how do you
how do you like telling someone get in shape? Right?
Speaker 2 (24:28):
Okay, how do you know that you? And like, how
do you know you getting in shape? Like how do
you know you at that level? Like what did you
do to because you said you thought you were in
shape and then you got it in shape?
Speaker 1 (24:38):
Well you know, I mean you just know, I mean
I put yourself like yeah, I didn't have any like
monitors on me telling me that stuff. I just you know,
I could see it. I had to leave out a
six pack, I did sit up. So I used to
run in the sand. Uh there's this this this, uh
this long six hundred foot hill on Sunset Boulevard by UCLA.
(25:00):
Run up that and run back, going to the gym
and play, run the steps, whatever I could to push myself.
I just knew I was in shape and it saved
my career one time too. You know. You know one
of the great stories nobody really knows about was so
(25:20):
Jack Kent Cook reads this story about this the street
ball player, a really great player in New York and
Rutger the Rucker League and everything guy named Joe Hammond's.
It was called the Helicopter, and so there was some
noise around the NBA back at the time that Joe Hammond,
who never played college basketball, was going to come off
(25:42):
the streets and play in the NBA somewhere, and that
the Lakers were interested in them. So we're flying back
to New York to play the Knicks, and we get
out of the cabs at the hotel. No buses back then, cabs,
and Casey Jones comes up to me and he says,
go and get dressed and come on back downstairs. We're
(26:04):
going to go to practice. I said, I thought we
had the day the other the day offer. So I
come downstairs, Bill Sharmon, Casey Jones, myself, get into a
cab and we go to a gym somewhere. Walk into
the gym. I looked across and I see Joe Hammond
and a friend and uh, so Casey says to me,
(26:24):
you better be good today because it's a one on
one deal. Yeah, and uh and he was great. He
was talented, talented player, absolutely better than I was, you know.
And so I said to Bill, I said, could we
warm up for like ten minutes first so we can
get a good sweat. I just got off a flight,
and I said him too. And so we started runing
(26:48):
suicide okay, okay, now let's do some shooting. Warmed up okay,
and he started to get gassed because he wasn't any
kind of shape I was in. Then we played one
on one and you know, at the end of the day,
you know he wants some. I want some. We went, okay,
can we go set, run, run. So it's a full
court game. And so we get back in the cargo
(27:09):
back to the hotel and I'm like worried to death.
Casey calls me on the phone. He said, don't worry
about it, you know. I mean, we can't. We can't
bring Joe, you know, to La. So it was him
with you, Like this is that kind of workout? I
think I think it was, you know, but the story
goes if you google it up, then I did. Joe
Hammond said he kicked my hands. To this day, he said,
(27:32):
when I worked out against pat Riley, they sent pat
Riley into work out with me, and I kicked his
ass and I didn't want to play for the Lakers
or whatever it is. And I never got to meet him.
I wanted to meet him again somewhere, just to say
hello to him. It sort of reminds me of the
game that I played in sixty six, you know, Glory
(27:54):
Road game against Texas Western. I became very good friends
with all those guys. Yeah, and but I would have
liked to get got back with Joe because those were
the moments some of us go through, you know, from
that standpoint. I don't know why I got into that story,
but I know that you said. Not a lot of
people have heard that from Look at that photo right there,
(28:21):
but I put that photo up. It was that guy
right there. We look a look at how cut I was, man,
I mean in shape, body, fat was probably five percent,
beard was perfect Sonny Bono, Look that's what I look
at that guy. Yeah, look at that guy. So did
you get did you get a chance to pick your
number back then? Or you just got a jersey? No,
I was number twelve. Did you pick twelve? But they
(28:41):
just gave it to me because I was twelve. I
don't know why, but I picked twelve. I had a jersey.
I was forty to fifty four, forty two, and then
twelve was my number. Yeah, you know, but you see
this wristband right here. Uh huh, guess what? Because my
hands are so small, is that underneath that risk wristband
was a bunch of stick them. So I'd always put
(29:05):
stick them and I'd get all over my fingers so
I could handle the ball. And it used to really
upset all the players. Like Jerry West knew when I
was because he didn't like it. He says, and he
give it to the official. I say, no, Jerry, I
need it, and he said, throw it to the official.
And then they started finding and oh you can see
(29:26):
it right here. You see you see the right over there.
Stick them. That's why I could handle the ball. And
the other guy that used to use it all the
time was Don Nelson. He was the same way. He
used stick them all the time. How do you how
do you go? I mean, this is this is a
good looking guy. So we go from this good looking guy,
but then we get to the.
Speaker 2 (29:49):
The amani suits and the what how did you develop
this character?
Speaker 1 (29:54):
Right here? What did this character? So this is who
he was on the sideline on the lake. I mean,
that's that's who I became in like seventy eight, seventy nine,
when I was a broadcaster. Okay, So before I, you know,
then I was always sort of Natalie dressed, and my
dad taught me at a young age that when you
(30:14):
go out of the house, be groomed, you know, and
so I always had that in me. I just didn't
have the money to buy any clothes, you know, back then.
But we found a tailor in La myself, Jerry west
Happy Hairston, and then everybody started to go to this one, Taylor,
(30:34):
and he started making the suits and stuff, and this
long before Armani. And so I just believed that if
you're the head coach and you're going to be put
in front of a team, in front of twenty thousand people,
that a leader should The first thing a leader should
have is is he should have a presence. And he's
(30:57):
got to be able to communicate, and he's he's got
to be able to deal with real adversity. Those are
the three things. But the presence is important. And so
looking the part, you know, I mean, they don't want
me to come out here and look like some guy
that was wearing these big college shirts in the seventies
or eighties or whatever it is. I think the fans
(31:19):
want to see somebody who's respectful as a leader, and
the player is also from that standpoint, you know. So
I wasn't trying to show up, and then all of
a sudden it became something else, It became bigger than
what it was. I never tried. I never tried to
do any of that stuff until eighty eight. So between
eighty two and eighty eight, I never did anything commercial wise,
(31:44):
and then I did too much. I did too many things,
even when I went on to New York. And that
was good because I think some of the players got
upset that I was doing a lot of stuff and
they weren't doing things, and so I stopped doing things.
Speaker 2 (31:59):
So we talked about that a lot in our in
our meetings, you always will say, keep the main thing,
the main thing. You know, when I start getting these
endorsement deals and my time start getting spread it all around,
you start you always tell what you the main thing,
the main thing, because you can lose your too in
the midst of you know, of all the lights, right,
you know that comes with you. And I've always kept
(32:19):
that in mind even you know, even through it all,
it's all right, what's the main thing?
Speaker 1 (32:23):
Is a family? Is it? What is the main focus,
and so well, that's a perspective that I think anybody
in your position, anybody who becomes really great at something
in a profession where all of a sudden, the outside
world wants you, They want a piece of you, you know,
to promote the products, to travel, to wear their shoes
(32:46):
or whatever it is. And I think that's one of
the one of the great things about about today is
that players have an opportunity to really because it's a
short career theoretically, even though you could play twenty years
or eight or nine or whatever, it is that you
have a chance to really create generational wealth in a
(33:06):
way with the outside stuff. So but I think most
players are very, very mindful that continue to be great,
that this is a part of it. Okay, so if
you want eight days of filming and six days of
photographing and I got to move up, you know, you
got to really negotiate that stuff down otherwise it will
(33:27):
distract the hell out of it. To take over. So takeover.
Speaker 2 (33:30):
So yeah, yeah, so we are perfect. I was just
about to go to this moment.
Speaker 1 (33:35):
So let's go to two thousand and three.
Speaker 2 (33:39):
We got this photo right here of Zairaa and I
when we came here to this arena. Now the story
goes pat and I tell the story, and you teld
the story that you kind of became aware of me
when I played against Kentucky.
Speaker 1 (33:51):
Absolutely before that, but but that was the game. Yeah,
that was.
Speaker 2 (33:56):
And this photo right here is I mean, let's say
weeks later, go of weeks later out there to have
my triple double versus uh, Kentucky.
Speaker 1 (34:05):
What what did you see in me?
Speaker 2 (34:07):
I mean, I know I wasn't the first pick in
the draft, but I was the he's first pick in
the draft that year. What did you see in me
as the fifth pick that make you take that chance
on on me as a player?
Speaker 1 (34:19):
Well, at that time, we were really desperate had Kron. Yeah,
I love crime. Shout out to c You know, Kron
was uh, he was the guy that fell in the draft.
He was supposed to be picked fourteen, went to get
a knee, he went, he went. So he fell to
us and said, wow, I mean, we we have Crown Butler.
(34:39):
And I loved his attitude. I loved his backstory. You know,
I mean, God Krian is to this day, that's why
he's coaching here and not because of that. He's his integrity,
his his grit, his life in what he can teach
her guys is incredible. And so we had Koran, uh,
you know, we had Eddie, we had Brian, and so
(35:00):
we draft you and we got and then we got
another guy that came in with you that year. But
when I saw you in Milwaukee, we're playing the Bucks
and I had to go across the street from the
hotel and get on. I was on a treadmill or
a bike in the other game. And so I'm watching
the game and I'm peddling my ass off and You're
(35:23):
trying to get a sweat and all that's cold as hell,
and and I just saw something special. And I say
this because you know great and this stands out. It
just stands out. And there are a lot of great
players running up and down that court, great athletes, great players,
(35:43):
other players who were very good. And who is your teammate,
the big guy Rob Jackson? Yes, and I liked him too,
you know the way he played. But you just stood out, Dwayne,
and you dominated. And I can say I didn't know
how big they were. And his hands are huge, in
the length of his arms, all the things that I
(36:04):
think great athletes need in this game to dominate. I
don't care what sport it is, it's you know, you
had it, and uh but I saw the fierceness also there,
and uh so I was sold at that time. But
at the draft. The night of the draft, there was
this story that went around that I wanted to take
Chris Cayman because we needed a big. Beau was gone
(36:27):
because Zoe had had left the team, and so we
needed a big and Chris was there. I didn't know,
you know, we had the fifth pick. If Chris was
going to drop or you're going to get picked early. Uh,
it was Lebron Carmelo. And who was third, Well, Darko
went third and Darko went second. He went second, and
so no, it's uh when when Chris Bosh went up
(36:50):
to Chris Toronto, it was our pick and everybody thought
I was going to take Chris Cayman, who is a
good player. You know, he's seven foot, he had nice
career in this leg. But you know, I mean, one
thing I always did was keep my cards very close
on draft night, very close. Even the guys inside. Okay,
we'd all meet. Everybody, give their opinion, give me your list.
(37:14):
Everybody had their list. Take it all in. Then I
meet with Chet okay, and Chet and I would sit
there and go over it and usually we would come
into an agreement. So, no, you were the best player.
You're the best player for us at that time, and
I thought you were the best player in the draft
at that time too. And then guess what you got
(37:35):
to play with Chris and you got to play with
five years later. I said, well, you know, this is Nirvana.
But yeah, that's what I saw. I saw right off
the page as a young kid. He's a mature kid.
And then when we started to dive into the whole
history of Doane Wade, then you know, you just learned
(37:56):
something about you know, why, you know you got to
where you were and how hungry you were. And so
that picture coming in and holding Zay here one years old,
just one year old, and it seems like yesterday, Dwayne,
you know, it's two thousand and three, and and here
it is for you know, already twenty years later. So
it's just like time flies, where does it go? And
(38:19):
I get sad. It makes me sad that I said,
how did those twenty years already go with Dwayne, you
know and all the other players that I coached that.
You know, it just it just went by so fast.
The game is and the seasons are so fast that
you sort of forget everything and leave it in the
dust until you retire and you say, how did it
(38:39):
go that fast? You know, I can't believe I'm sitting
me and I'm sitting here. I'm like five years from removed,
sitting on the side. Unbelievable. I still think you can play.
You know, they should have an old man's leg. I
can't play. My knees don't want to play with me.
I can hoop you just a bunch of braces, right.
(39:04):
But I've always said that, you know, you know, the
three on three what is it called the big yeah? Uh?
Is to have the Hall of famers, the truly great players,
only maybe have you know, six teams and play three
on three half court. It's that'd be ugly basketball. We're
(39:31):
gonna cut off part one right there. It was amazing
talking to coach Riley.
Speaker 2 (39:35):
It's always amazing talking to coach Riley, but getting a
chance of talking to him about getting drafted in two
thousand and three, one of the most important moments for me,
but also one of my favorite photos is having my
son zayre there with me as well, and coming up
in part two, we're going to talk to coach Raley
about how he culture was created. This culture word is
(39:56):
something that everyone wants to know about.
Speaker 1 (39:58):
How, what is the culture? How's the heat culture? What
does it mean?
Speaker 2 (40:02):
And so we were here from the man himself who
created heat culture, pat Riley, coming to him,
Welcome to the Why with Dwyane Wade.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
I am honored to be able to sit and have
a conversation with a legend icon named pat Riley ra Else.
Thank you for taking this moment, Taking this moment.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
I'm into my office here, my presidential office downstairs. Entertain everybody.
Just tear it apart and set up. You and I
look good. Where are you up there? I feel good.
This is the main chair right here, pat It's a
good chair. It's twenty one years old. But Dwayne, anywhere, anytime.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
We can sit down chat, you know, yeah, anytime. So
last time we seen each other. Let's start there. Yeah,
it was it was that the Hall of Fame, Yes
it was. It wasn't your first time there. But question
to you when you were able to have players You've
had a lot of players going back to magic, you know,
Kareem and James. When you've had all these players who
(01:10):
have these great careers and then they end up in
a Hall of Fame moment, how does that feel from
your eyes sitting there in the seas watching your players
up there.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
You know, they're so unique, all of the players that become,
you know, Hall of Fame players, they're unique. Athletes, very
very talented, you know, all of them high IQ players,
but all of them contrary to maybe public opinion, and
they're grinders too, They really grind. And so all of
(01:42):
the people that I knew that I coached that made
it into the Hall of Fame, I knew their past.
I knew their history, where they come from and maybe
what it was like. Maybe I didn't live it, but
I knew it. And to see them up there, it's
such a sake moment for the individual that even family
(02:03):
members don't understand. And it's the pinnacle. So if there's
a legacy, and I don't really believe in legacies, really,
I think, no, I don't. That's a narrative by somebody
else who wants to create legacy. I understand. I've been
part of teams that have legacies, and I've been around
(02:24):
players who are you know, have a legacy. But when
you're standing there at the Hall of Fame and I'm
watching I gave a speech, you gave a speech was incredible,
and it brings tears to my eyes because I know
that's the last thing that we sort of do in
getting the acknowledgment and the recognition for a career, but
(02:48):
not just a career for a life, because those people
who elect you into the Hall of Fame don't know
what you had to do to get to the first level.
The first level, right, And once you get to the
first level and you get recognized, and you're hungry, you see,
is this all I got to do to be great?
Or is this all I have to do to be recognized?
(03:10):
Is play basketball? And then we get better and better
and better, and so that final recognition is, uh, it's
one that you know, very few people have, and you
have one. I have one, you know, but all the
players that we hang from the rafters here is just
an incredible feeling to see, you know, to see I
get very melancholy when I when I listen to the
players that I coach speak and it was wonderful. You know,
(03:35):
it does actually feel like that.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
Like when I took the stage and I took a
minute just to look out, and I was like, it's
gonna be all the great moments in life, but from
basketball and everything I put into this sport, this is
this is the last moment like this. And I just
kind of like took that deep breath and took it in,
you know, right.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
And and that's what I've noticed, you know, over the years.
I remember when I went in, uh, and I love
him to death, and we always used to have have fun.
And so they gave us seven minutes. You had a
seven minute speech, that's all you had. There was no
teleprompter back then. And so I was the very last
one of eleven that that gave speeches that night. Wait,
(04:15):
yours was seven minutes? No, oh, I had I had
it at seven. And then Dick by Tal, who I
loved the death, was right before me. He went, so
I'm going with my seven minute speech here and uh.
And you know, Dick was great and he went off
(04:35):
and uh and had a great speech. And then when
I went up there and I looked at the audience,
was three last. I was last. Yeah, so like were
last last, And and so I messed my speech up.
I didn't really give a great speech. I had a
good speech, but then I messed it up because I
started to go rogue. You don't want to do that.
(04:58):
At the Hall of Fay. You have that blue guard
out there. You had you had your blue card, my
blue card right there. I had like everything I was
going to say in order. I had it, you know,
thank you, that's it. Just thank you to everybody. And
then I went off in which I had a tendency
to do when I spoke to the team. We're just
divert but it's it really is a special a special place,
(05:23):
and and so there's not much more you can say
about it. You know, I look at it as you know,
the final thing for me in my career, but you know,
as a coach. But you know, I continue on.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
You know, yeah, are there glaring like characteristics when it
comes to players that can be capable of been on
that stage one day that you look that you look
for when you're you know, trying to build team around
a certain kind of talent.
Speaker 1 (05:51):
What are those characteristics? Well, I think you see it
almost immediately. I mean, I mean I think players seeing
other players. I think, uh, you know, gms and presidents
that the draft you know, are sign I think you
see it it being incredible talent. You see that. And
(06:13):
then when when the whole package is is refined and
hone and a player needs two or three years of
experience in the league, even if they're talented, you know,
you see something unique. So the one thing that always
you know, for me, you know, was you know, the
(06:33):
integrity that a player had in getting better, would they
would they really work to get better. I remember the
first year that you came here as a rookie, and
I remember stand working with you from half court to
each elbow to each elbow, working on your handle, behind
the back, whatever it is, going left, going right, and
pulling up on that jumper, going all the way and
(06:55):
just over and over and over. And so you know,
once you see that in a player where he's already great,
he's already gifted, he's already talented. I saw you, you know,
you know, in the Marquette game, and then you arrived.
You arrived in the second year. He got hurt, but
you really arrived in the finals. That was the breakthrough.
(07:18):
And so every great player has a has a real
breakthrough moment when their back is so against the wall
and you said, I'm not going out like this. You
find out, yeah, you have scored fifteen in a row.
But that was a magical time. And that's why I
always say that at that time, in those moments, every
(07:41):
player is the greatest player in the world. Over a
period of two months, the playoffs, six weeks whatever it was,
and that's where you had landed at that time, your
third year, the third year the greatest player on the
planet man, and everybody knew it.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
I get those text messages from you before games and
you it'll.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
Start with B I W. Yeah, b I W. Set
me right though. You know that that gives you a mindset.
You don't have to give a long text to a player.
Most of the time a player look at a long text,
they just want to read it. Yeah, I think, But
like the B I W. Best in the world. That's
the responsibility of those initials. For me.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
It wasn't just go out there and score a lot
of points. What I what I look at is best
in the world. To be that, so many other things
that I have to bring to the game and bring
to my teammates. And so I took pride in those
those street letters because it was like, all right, like
I need to be a leader. I need to I
need to defend and that you know, I need to
do more than just you know, highlight reel.
Speaker 1 (08:43):
And so I took a lot of a lot of
pride in those letters. It all comes, Dane, Uh, the
process of real leadership, and it's very simple, you know,
leadership is an interactive relationship, you know, whereby you get
put in the position you could hired, players vote you in.
(09:05):
You just rise that position and you take it and
to get a result. That's what leadership is. It's an
interactive relationship whereby you do these things to be in
that position, but we get a result, and that result
usually is winning on your part. And so, but to
be able to grow and to smooth all the edges
(09:26):
off of your game and your personality the first two
or three years in the league. You arrived probably in
the third year where it was complete and it lasted
for the rest of your career, and you made adjustments,
and you had to make adjustments throughout your career for
the personnel that we had coming in. And so even
though your best years were your best scoring years were
after Shack left, you know, I mean the money and
(09:52):
the MVP years, those were the I call the real
MVP years. We just didn't have the kind of team
that we needed.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
Yeah, you know, no, I'm not gonna even go there.
I was going to go to my team that I
was having a ball and knowing you ain't got a
chance in a lot of games. I remember one game
we're playing the Lakers, and I will have you know,
Earl barn was my center and I had, you know,
these kind of guys and Kobe looked at me. They
was trapping me, and I was like calling for help,
and he just started laughing at me. He was like, yeah,
you're about to go through it, you know, like go
(10:20):
through iut what I went through. Good luck and that helps.
It does absolutely. It doesn't humble you. I mean it
makes you more angry. I mean you get you would
be seething, you.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
Know, and and well I can't do it all, but
I do need a little bit of help. And they
gave you as much as they could. They could always
give you what their level of talent was and what
I allowed them, you know, to do around you, you know,
as a coach. So some of your favorite years too.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
You know, like everybody thinks on outside that the championship
years automatically has to be a favorite, But some of
those years where you're playing with guys who are maybe
not at that level that you know, like a Lebron Shack,
those become some of your favorite seasons because you get
so much more out of those times. You squeeze all
the juice out the limit and those teams and you see,
you learn a lot about yourself, you see a lot
(11:12):
of growth in your teammates. And so sometimes you walk
away like, you know what, we didn't win, but this
was a successful year from that step right.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
Well, as you said, you know, you squeeze the lemon
you get exactly what's inside of them eliminated and uh.
And I always used to use that analogy that if
you squeeze the player when there's pressure, you get exactly
what's inside also and you don't want lemonade and uh.
(11:41):
And so pressure has a tendency to change over the
course of a career a season, and then especially when
you go through adversity like you went through, won the championship,
separated your shoulder surgery, you know, rehab, the Olympics, you
know all that stuff. And then you know we draft. Yeah,
(12:01):
I love Mike talent and and I wanted to keep
him when we got the Big three, but uh, but
we had to move him and Mike came in. But
but that team was where you could almost use it
as a canvas and how how are you going to
get to the next level? And I think that team
(12:23):
taught you how to sort of get to the next
level also by having to share the court.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
So you walk in a lot of rooms nowadays, and
you've been doing it for a very long time, and
you talk about like leader, right, A lot of people
talk about leading and being a leader. How do you
actually do that? How do you actually take that first
step to say, you know what, I'm going to lead.
I'm going to stand up in front of a group
of men, women, and I'm gonna I'm going to be king.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
I'm going to be leader. How do you do that?
It's an attitude first, I mean, and it's born out
of I mean, I was a leader. I was always
a guy that you know it was on the bench
as a player. So I knew how to follow leaders,
I knew how to take direction. I knew how to
(13:08):
sort of deal with my role. So I learned a lot,
you know, about not being a leader or seeing what
leaders really do. Coaches and players in my career until
I became a coach, and so I was always good
at clinics. So when I went to a clinic, I
was good. I could teach drills, I could talk to kids,
(13:30):
and so had I had this inside of my brain
about x's and o's and moving things around, and I
remembered what coaches used to say to me and stuff
and so, But when Jerry West pushed me through the
door in nineteen eighty one, November ninth, or whatever it was,
in nineteen eighty one or eighteenth, and he said, he
(13:51):
said to me, he said, this is you, this is yours.
You know, I'm going to be the head coach of
a one hundred million dollar franchise. And Jerry Buss was
very he was saying what Patton never coached a day
in his life, or and things like that. So when
he pushed me through the door, and I went home
(14:12):
that night and I said, Chris, I'm going to coach
the Lakers for the next month until they find somebody else.
I said, I don't know. I'm gonna say to him tomorrow.
And she said, you know, why don't you keep it simple.
You know, Chris is a prayer warrior, you know, and
so you know, we've been together fifty five years. And
(14:32):
she said, house divided against itself surely will not stand.
That's what she said to me start there, which is
a biblical urse, obviously. And because we were in disarray
and dissension and all that stuff at the time, and
that you're either with me or against me. You're either
with us or against us. So that's the message that
I just walked right in with that message. And then
(14:54):
I started to talk about where we had to go.
And and so I always believed Wayne that when you're
in a position of leadership as a coach, I always
had to figure out what I was going to say
to the guys, you know, the next day, you know,
(15:15):
pre practice, post practice, pregame, halftime. I thought about all
these things. I used to write down little words about Okay,
this would be a good little place to start, maybe
at halftime if we're up or down. So you got
to have something to say to him that might resonate
with him. Some won't like it, some will. And then
when you go directly at somebody, which I didn't have
(15:37):
a problem doing that because I think it was the truth,
and I was criticism, constructive criticism, but a lot of
players would resent it. But I felt that I had
to get to that truth. I remember when Zau when
I was coaching Zoe, and I was pushing them real
hard in practice one day, and so was the best.
(16:00):
He never said he worked hard, so I shouldn't even
went after him, but I went after him one day,
and uh not in a real negative way, but I
went after him hard because I wanted to motivate him,
to motivate the other guys. And so he gave me
the fu. Everything comes to a silence, you know, in
(16:24):
the practice. We're over at Basal at the time. That's
when we played the Miami Arena and uh, I looked
at him, and he looked at me, and he said
to me, he said, should I go? I said, where
should I leave the practice floor? I said, you're right.
So he walked into the locker room and on the
(16:46):
way out, I said, I said, I yelled at him.
I said, Zo, if you ever say that to me again,
that's fine. I just want you to teach me something
as to why you said f you to me. Teach
me why I can take it. And he came into
my office after that and he would he would tell
me exactly what he thought as a leader that I
(17:06):
was doing that was disrupting the players. So I listened
to them, you know, like the conversations I used to
have with you guys. Yeah, you got a funny story
about you, but I won't tell it now. But you
got to have something to say what I had stuff
to say every day, you know, so you got to
have something to say as a leader every day to
(17:27):
your troops, but not to overwhelm.
Speaker 2 (17:38):
What do you think about all these things that have
come out about your motivational speeches? Like some of them
are real, some of them are not. Like people say,
you've tab bags over your head, You've they're all real. Yeah,
I dunk my head in the water bowl thing.
Speaker 1 (17:58):
But I think I would do them to get their
attention one, because you know, it's hard to keep a
group of guys' attention for eighty two games for THEESUS
nine months and practices and everything, and so every now
and then or to make a point. You know, I
can remember, and this came from Jimmy Johnson. You know,
(18:19):
I remember I brought I got I brought a two
by four by twelve into the locker room. Four You
get this from I don't know, I got no, no,
And so I brought the two by four in the
locker room and I placed it down. All the guys
were ready, because we had a rule. You had to
be taped, ready, dressed and everything ready. And then you
(18:41):
got to rush out of there under the court, and
so I they all looked at the two by four
and I got on the two by four and I
walked across it without falling off it and balanced myself,
walked right across it, and I said, well, somebody else
can come up and walk. And the couple guys came
(19:02):
up and walked across and they laugh. I could do
it too. I said, what if we put that two
hundred feet in the air that now is spanning two buildings.
Two hundred feet in the air changes, it changes the
whole thing. It's called fear. I'm not doing that here.
It's easy, but up here is where you have to play.
And so you know, my whole theory about that is
(19:25):
that you can play on the floor. But if you
want to beat Dwayne, or you want to beat Michael,
or you want to beat Kobe, or you want to
beat any of these guys, you got to meet him
at the rim. You got to get up there at
the rim and meet him there. Otherwise you're going to
dunk on you embarrass you. But also a subtle message
was sent about you meet somebody at the rim, what happens,
(19:50):
I mean, what happens it's a collision, man. Yes, I
had one rule, I said, I said, if you meet
him at the rim and you take somebody out, you
got to go out with him. You don't want to
hurt anybody. But you got to meet him at the rim, Michael,
you got to meet him at the rim or it's over.
And so that's why playing up here, playing on two
(20:14):
by four by twelve, everything down here, it up there.
So anyway, I would think about some of these things,
and I would I would talk to either stand or
I talked to, you know, to Bobb or somebody, and
I say, you know, what do you think, Oh, that'd
be great, go ahead and do that. Bobviously that's stupid.
He be stupid. They're gonna laugh at you. I said, well,
(20:34):
maybe they need a laugh or something, you know like that.
But I remember ours with you. But I'm not gonna
get into that any know.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
When when the cameras were off, we were talking going
back to your Laker days for a minute. When the
cameras were off, we were talking about Jerry West, who
you referenced a lot throughout your playing career, obviously going
into coaching, but we talked about one of the main
pillars of this he coach and it's the best condition, right,
(21:02):
And so you talked about how as a player you
had to make sure that you were in top shape
and condition, and a lot of it was to prepare
the other best players, which is Jerry West, to be ready.
Can you talk about that, because now I know where
we got all this conditioning from and.
Speaker 1 (21:18):
All this Well that's one of it. But the other
thing was, you know, you know, it's the fight or flight,
you know, syndrome. Because I had tremendous fear that I
wasn't going to survive and have a job. So there
were no no cut contracts back then except for Stars,
so I never had a guaranteed contract. And so I
(21:39):
was told by Bill Sharman when he came to coach
the Lakers in seventy one seventy two, he came over
from the Utah Stars in the AVA and of course
you know he's a former Celtic and he brought Casey
Jones with him, and Jerry West calls me on the
phone and said said, I can't believe that Jack can cook.
Went and hired Bill Shearman and Casey Jones, who beat
(22:02):
me six times in the finals. In Boston, you know.
So this was like the Boston Celtics and Red Auerbach
coming to coach the Lakers, and so he was really
upset about it, but he realized how good, great a
coach that Bill was. So Bill sees me in the summer,
calls me in for meeting and he says, look it,
I don't know how this is going to go. You know,
(22:23):
I'm thinking my careers over with the Lakers. He said,
but if you will come to training camp and if
you win the mile he used to have a mile race,
and then you rent all the sprints and you win
all the suicides, and you play defense against Jerry and
Gail Goodrich and Jim McMillan every day hard in Elgin Baylor.
(22:46):
He said, if you do that and show me that,
he said, I think you can make the team and
help us as a defender. And so that whole summer
that's what I did. I got in the best shape
of my life, and I didn't. I realized that I
wasn't in great shape, and then I got into the
best shape of my life. I went to training camp,
I accomplished all those things, and I made the team.
(23:07):
And so I said, if this is all I have
to do to make the team, then I'm going to
do it. And you know what happened. The residual reward
of that was I didn't play for the first six
or seven games, and then I started to play. He
called my name because I was in shape, and he
sent me after a Fraser. He sent me after all
(23:29):
of these guys Aroll Monroe, and you know, it's like
meeting somebody at the rim. My job was to survive.
So I manhandled them and they used to let your
hand check back in the day, and even though they'd
still score on me, I would do things by my
conditioning always kept me in the game that he got
me into the rotation. I became part of what they
(23:52):
called in seventy one seventy two the Magnificent seven. I
was with Flynn, Robinson and myself. So that is why
I carried that with me best condition And but you
know as well as I do, you can't. You could
not have played at the level you played and the
way that I coached you or anybody else coached you,
(24:12):
unless you were in top ship. You just couldn't. You
couldn't be efficient, and you were the best conditioned athlete
you know, one of them that we've ever had here
and so, and the results showed that how do you
how do you like telling someone get in shape? Right?
Speaker 2 (24:28):
Okay, how do you know that you? And like, how
do you know you getting in shape? Like how do
you know you at that level? Like what did you
do to because you said you thought you were in
shape and then you got it in shape?
Speaker 1 (24:38):
Well you know, I mean you just know, I mean
I put yourself like yeah, I didn't have any like
monitors on me telling me that stuff. I just you know,
I could see it. I had to leave out a
six pack, I did sit up. So I used to
run in the sand. Uh there's this this this, uh
this long six hundred foot hill on Sunset Boulevard by UCLA.
(25:00):
Run up that and run back, going to the gym
and play, run the steps, whatever I could to push myself.
I just knew I was in shape and it saved
my career one time too. You know. You know one
of the great stories nobody really knows about was so
(25:20):
Jack Kent Cook reads this story about this the street
ball player, a really great player in New York and
Rutger the Rucker League and everything guy named Joe Hammond's.
It was called the Helicopter, and so there was some
noise around the NBA back at the time that Joe Hammond,
who never played college basketball, was going to come off
(25:42):
the streets and play in the NBA somewhere, and that
the Lakers were interested in them. So we're flying back
to New York to play the Knicks, and we get
out of the cabs at the hotel. No buses back then, cabs,
and Casey Jones comes up to me and he says,
go and get dressed and come on back downstairs. We're
(26:04):
going to go to practice. I said, I thought we
had the day the other the day offer. So I
come downstairs, Bill Sharmon, Casey Jones, myself, get into a
cab and we go to a gym somewhere. Walk into
the gym. I looked across and I see Joe Hammond
and a friend and uh, so Casey says to me,
(26:24):
you better be good today because it's a one on
one deal. Yeah, and uh and he was great. He
was talented, talented player, absolutely better than I was, you know.
And so I said to Bill, I said, could we
warm up for like ten minutes first so we can
get a good sweat. I just got off a flight,
and I said him too. And so we started runing
(26:48):
suicide okay, okay, now let's do some shooting. Warmed up okay,
and he started to get gassed because he wasn't any
kind of shape I was in. Then we played one
on one and you know, at the end of the day,
you know he wants some. I want some. We went, okay,
can we go set, run, run. So it's a full
court game. And so we get back in the cargo
(27:09):
back to the hotel and I'm like worried to death.
Casey calls me on the phone. He said, don't worry
about it, you know. I mean, we can't. We can't
bring Joe, you know, to La. So it was him
with you, Like this is that kind of workout? I
think I think it was, you know, but the story
goes if you google it up, then I did. Joe
Hammond said he kicked my hands. To this day, he said,
(27:32):
when I worked out against pat Riley, they sent pat
Riley into work out with me, and I kicked his
ass and I didn't want to play for the Lakers
or whatever it is. And I never got to meet him.
I wanted to meet him again somewhere, just to say
hello to him. It sort of reminds me of the
game that I played in sixty six, you know, Glory
(27:54):
Road game against Texas Western. I became very good friends
with all those guys. Yeah, and but I would have
liked to get got back with Joe because those were
the moments some of us go through, you know, from
that standpoint. I don't know why I got into that story,
but I know that you said. Not a lot of
people have heard that from Look at that photo right there,
(28:21):
but I put that photo up. It was that guy
right there. We look a look at how cut I was, man,
I mean in shape, body, fat was probably five percent,
beard was perfect Sonny Bono, Look that's what I look
at that guy. Yeah, look at that guy. So did
you get did you get a chance to pick your
number back then? Or you just got a jersey? No,
I was number twelve. Did you pick twelve? But they
(28:41):
just gave it to me because I was twelve. I
don't know why, but I picked twelve. I had a jersey.
I was forty to fifty four, forty two, and then
twelve was my number. Yeah, you know, but you see
this wristband right here. Uh huh, guess what? Because my
hands are so small, is that underneath that risk wristband
was a bunch of stick them. So I'd always put
(29:05):
stick them and I'd get all over my fingers so
I could handle the ball. And it used to really
upset all the players. Like Jerry West knew when I
was because he didn't like it. He says, and he
give it to the official. I say, no, Jerry, I
need it, and he said, throw it to the official.
And then they started finding and oh you can see
(29:26):
it right here. You see you see the right over there.
Stick them. That's why I could handle the ball. And
the other guy that used to use it all the
time was Don Nelson. He was the same way. He
used stick them all the time. How do you how
do you go? I mean, this is this is a
good looking guy. So we go from this good looking guy,
but then we get to the.
Speaker 2 (29:49):
The amani suits and the what how did you develop
this character?
Speaker 1 (29:54):
Right here? What did this character? So this is who
he was on the sideline on the lake. I mean,
that's that's who I became in like seventy eight, seventy nine,
when I was a broadcaster. Okay, So before I, you know,
then I was always sort of Natalie dressed, and my
dad taught me at a young age that when you
(30:14):
go out of the house, be groomed, you know, and
so I always had that in me. I just didn't
have the money to buy any clothes, you know, back then.
But we found a tailor in La myself, Jerry west
Happy Hairston, and then everybody started to go to this one, Taylor,
(30:34):
and he started making the suits and stuff, and this
long before Armani. And so I just believed that if
you're the head coach and you're going to be put
in front of a team, in front of twenty thousand people,
that a leader should The first thing a leader should
have is is he should have a presence. And he's
(30:57):
got to be able to communicate, and he's he's got
to be able to deal with real adversity. Those are
the three things. But the presence is important. And so
looking the part, you know, I mean, they don't want
me to come out here and look like some guy
that was wearing these big college shirts in the seventies
or eighties or whatever it is. I think the fans
(31:19):
want to see somebody who's respectful as a leader, and
the player is also from that standpoint, you know. So
I wasn't trying to show up, and then all of
a sudden it became something else, It became bigger than
what it was. I never tried. I never tried to
do any of that stuff until eighty eight. So between
eighty two and eighty eight, I never did anything commercial wise,
(31:44):
and then I did too much. I did too many things,
even when I went on to New York. And that
was good because I think some of the players got
upset that I was doing a lot of stuff and
they weren't doing things, and so I stopped doing things.
Speaker 2 (31:59):
So we talked about that a lot in our in
our meetings, you always will say, keep the main thing,
the main thing. You know, when I start getting these
endorsement deals and my time start getting spread it all around,
you start you always tell what you the main thing,
the main thing, because you can lose your too in
the midst of you know, of all the lights, right,
you know that comes with you. And I've always kept
(32:19):
that in mind even you know, even through it all,
it's all right, what's the main thing?
Speaker 1 (32:23):
Is a family? Is it? What is the main focus,
and so well, that's a perspective that I think anybody
in your position, anybody who becomes really great at something
in a profession where all of a sudden, the outside
world wants you, They want a piece of you, you know,
to promote the products, to travel, to wear their shoes
(32:46):
or whatever it is. And I think that's one of
the one of the great things about about today is
that players have an opportunity to really because it's a
short career theoretically, even though you could play twenty years
or eight or nine or whatever, it is that you
have a chance to really create generational wealth in a
(33:06):
way with the outside stuff. So but I think most
players are very, very mindful that continue to be great,
that this is a part of it. Okay, so if
you want eight days of filming and six days of
photographing and I got to move up, you know, you
got to really negotiate that stuff down otherwise it will
(33:27):
distract the hell out of it. To take over. So takeover.
Speaker 2 (33:30):
So yeah, yeah, so we are perfect. I was just
about to go to this moment.
Speaker 1 (33:35):
So let's go to two thousand and three.
Speaker 2 (33:39):
We got this photo right here of Zairaa and I
when we came here to this arena. Now the story
goes pat and I tell the story, and you teld
the story that you kind of became aware of me
when I played against Kentucky.
Speaker 1 (33:51):
Absolutely before that, but but that was the game. Yeah,
that was.
Speaker 2 (33:56):
And this photo right here is I mean, let's say
weeks later, go of weeks later out there to have
my triple double versus uh, Kentucky.
Speaker 1 (34:05):
What what did you see in me?
Speaker 2 (34:07):
I mean, I know I wasn't the first pick in
the draft, but I was the he's first pick in
the draft that year. What did you see in me
as the fifth pick that make you take that chance
on on me as a player?
Speaker 1 (34:19):
Well, at that time, we were really desperate had Kron. Yeah,
I love crime. Shout out to c You know, Kron
was uh, he was the guy that fell in the draft.
He was supposed to be picked fourteen, went to get
a knee, he went, he went. So he fell to
us and said, wow, I mean, we we have Crown Butler.
(34:39):
And I loved his attitude. I loved his backstory. You know,
I mean, God Krian is to this day, that's why
he's coaching here and not because of that. He's his integrity,
his his grit, his life in what he can teach
her guys is incredible. And so we had Koran, uh,
you know, we had Eddie, we had Brian, and so
(35:00):
we draft you and we got and then we got
another guy that came in with you that year. But
when I saw you in Milwaukee, we're playing the Bucks
and I had to go across the street from the
hotel and get on. I was on a treadmill or
a bike in the other game. And so I'm watching
the game and I'm peddling my ass off and You're
(35:23):
trying to get a sweat and all that's cold as hell,
and and I just saw something special. And I say
this because you know great and this stands out. It
just stands out. And there are a lot of great
players running up and down that court, great athletes, great players,
(35:43):
other players who were very good. And who is your teammate,
the big guy Rob Jackson? Yes, and I liked him too,
you know the way he played. But you just stood out, Dwayne,
and you dominated. And I can say I didn't know
how big they were. And his hands are huge, in
the length of his arms, all the things that I
(36:04):
think great athletes need in this game to dominate. I
don't care what sport it is, it's you know, you
had it, and uh but I saw the fierceness also there,
and uh so I was sold at that time. But
at the draft. The night of the draft, there was
this story that went around that I wanted to take
Chris Cayman because we needed a big. Beau was gone
(36:27):
because Zoe had had left the team, and so we
needed a big and Chris was there. I didn't know,
you know, we had the fifth pick. If Chris was
going to drop or you're going to get picked early. Uh,
it was Lebron Carmelo. And who was third, Well, Darko
went third and Darko went second. He went second, and
so no, it's uh when when Chris Bosh went up
(36:50):
to Chris Toronto, it was our pick and everybody thought
I was going to take Chris Cayman, who is a
good player. You know, he's seven foot, he had nice
career in this leg. But you know, I mean, one
thing I always did was keep my cards very close
on draft night, very close. Even the guys inside. Okay,
we'd all meet. Everybody, give their opinion, give me your list.
(37:14):
Everybody had their list. Take it all in. Then I
meet with Chet okay, and Chet and I would sit
there and go over it and usually we would come
into an agreement. So, no, you were the best player.
You're the best player for us at that time, and
I thought you were the best player in the draft
at that time too. And then guess what you got
(37:35):
to play with Chris and you got to play with
five years later. I said, well, you know, this is Nirvana.
But yeah, that's what I saw. I saw right off
the page as a young kid. He's a mature kid.
And then when we started to dive into the whole
history of Doane Wade, then you know, you just learned
(37:56):
something about you know, why, you know you got to
where you were and how hungry you were. And so
that picture coming in and holding Zay here one years old,
just one year old, and it seems like yesterday, Dwayne,
you know, it's two thousand and three, and and here
it is for you know, already twenty years later. So
it's just like time flies, where does it go? And
(38:19):
I get sad. It makes me sad that I said,
how did those twenty years already go with Dwayne, you
know and all the other players that I coached that.
You know, it just it just went by so fast.
The game is and the seasons are so fast that
you sort of forget everything and leave it in the
dust until you retire and you say, how did it
(38:39):
go that fast? You know, I can't believe I'm sitting
me and I'm sitting here. I'm like five years from removed,
sitting on the side. Unbelievable. I still think you can play.
You know, they should have an old man's leg. I
can't play. My knees don't want to play with me.
I can hoop you just a bunch of braces, right.
(39:04):
But I've always said that, you know, you know, the
three on three what is it called the big yeah? Uh?
Is to have the Hall of famers, the truly great players,
only maybe have you know, six teams and play three
on three half court. It's that'd be ugly basketball. We're
(39:31):
gonna cut off part one right there. It was amazing
talking to coach Riley.
Speaker 2 (39:35):
It's always amazing talking to coach Riley, but getting a
chance of talking to him about getting drafted in two
thousand and three, one of the most important moments for me,
but also one of my favorite photos is having my
son zayre there with me as well, and coming up
in part two, we're going to talk to coach Raley
about how he culture was created. This culture word is
(39:56):
something that everyone wants to know about.
Speaker 1 (39:58):
How, what is the culture? How's the heat culture? What
does it mean?
Speaker 2 (40:02):
And so we were here from the man himself who
created heat culture, pat Riley, coming to him,
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