If Pat Riley wants to successfully get out of the mess he and his team find themselves in, the Miami Heat president will have to follow the toughest advice of his career: his own.
For at least the third time in just over a decade, the Heat’s leader – considered internally a basketball philosopher, an unconditional winner and an unrivaled culture builder – finds himself at a crossroads with the superstar of his own team.
In 2014, it was LeBron James. That time, as uncertainty over LeBron’s future loomed over the league just before free agency kicked off, Riley spoke pointedly about LeBron saying that people should stick together “if you have the courage,” while insisting that you should do it. You don’t have to “find the first door and run away.”
LeBron left for Cleveland a few weeks later.
A few years later, in 2016, Dwyane Wade and Riley drifted apart, and Wade suddenly saw Chicago as a place of greener pastures. This pattern of friction and upset goes back even further, to 2008, when a near-fight in practice between Riley and Shaquille O’Neal ultimately led to perhaps the greatest center of all time reunite with the Phoenix Suns.
And now here we are in 2025, stuck again with Pat Riley déjà vu.
This time, the Big Man is of course in a bind with Jimmy Butler.
Butler’s seven-game suspension for “multiple instances of conduct detrimental to the team” ends Friday. Its consequences could last much longer.
Butler doesn’t have the contract extension he wanted last offseason when many of these problems began. And the feeling within the Heat organization has gone in a matter of weeks from a calm confidence that the Heat Way will prevail no matter what to something truly rare there — a bewildered uncertainty.
Butler may not be on the NBA’s list of all-time players like LeBron, Shaq, or even Wade, but he remains essential to Miami’s current plans. They are 12-10 with him this season and 8-9 in his absences, including 3-4 during this suspension, but the tension has been clearer and deeper than their record with and without him.
Miami’s offensive rating, 11th in the ranking NBA before his suspension, dropped to 27th in his seven away games, while the defense remained largely static. And the internal drama has been an obvious distraction for a Heat team convinced it can and should try to compete this year.
Riley is a stubborn and impressive man. It’s always his way or the highway. Take him to Cleveland, or Chicago, or Phoenix, but Riley’s story is if you don’t do it his way, you do it somewhere else.
“LeBron James only stayed four years,” Wade explained this week on “The Why with Dwyane Wade” podcast. “It didn’t go the way LeBron James wanted it. It didn’t go the way Dwyane Wade (wanted it). It went the way Pat Riley is going to run it and the way (Heat owner) Micky Arison manages it.”
This is where Riley needs to hear some hard truths from…himself.
The man behind the astute understanding of “More’s Disease” must remember his own teachings. Maybe even read his own book, “Showtime: Inside the Lakers’ Breakthrough Season,” where he lays it all out.
The idea, born from Riley’s undeniable genius, is that success, wealth, acclaim, praise, and power can erode the very habits that helped you achieve those things in the first place.
In Riley’s explanation, perspective can slip away and selfishness and ego can creep in where they shouldn’t be. The need for personal fulfillment – whether it be shots, praise, or recognition – begins to drive a wedge between the individual and the group, and even between the individual’s obvious gifts and that what this person must do to use them correctly.
Sound familiar?
Butler is surely not innocent here, but there has been, in years past, the feeling that Riley’s pride – all that “more” he has accumulated over the years of greatness and the illness that, according to him, follows from this – got in his way.
Many around the league say the Heat would have Damian Lillard right now if Riley’s approach with Portland Trail Blazers general manager Joe Cronin had been gentler, gentler — finesse, let’s say, rather than intractability .
Much like Riley probably should have handled Butler and, before him, guys like Shaq, Wade and especially LeBron.
Many big names can fall victim to The Disease Of More, and the latest appears to be Pat Riley himself. Slowly. Year after year. Star by star.
Where is the urgency to win now? Where is the understanding head coach Erik Spoelstra, probably the best in the game, who still needs talent to compete with other ascending clubs? Where is the ability to recognize that, since LeBron’s departure and the demise of Miami’s Big Three, Miami has not seemed to be a consistent championship contender, despite the team’s two Finals appearances?
When LeBron left Riley and the Heat all those years ago, he succeeded without them in every way imaginable. This created a lingering grievance from his former protectors. It also ushered in an era of true player accountability, a world in which managing stars who can, and often do, treat contracts as suggestions is just part of the reality and business of basketball professional.
Maybe Riley refused to acknowledge this fact and deal with the consequences because it’s not the right way to do things. he did it when he was building his own CV and his own trophy case. Perhaps lingering resentment toward LeBron and LeBron’s exit over a decade ago made Riley reluctant or unable to accept what LeBron did.
Maybe everything Riley has done and won and accomplished has signified his ego, his need for power, his belief that his approach can’t be changed because it’s about him – all the little ways in which The Disease Of More can sneak up on the deeply successful one – – have taken root.
Why a divorce between Jimmy Butler and Pat Riley always seemed inevitable as two stubborn winners face off in Miami
Bill Reiter
Whatever the reason, Butler is right about one thing. In recent years, the Heat haven’t been as aggressive as teams like the defending champion Boston Celtics, the feverishly ambitious New York Knicks or the rising Western power Oklahoma City Thunder, to name a few. a few.
While they built, the Heat held on. And Butler’s frustrations boiled over.
This stubbornness kept Miami in regular season mediocrity, often lifted by a remarkable coach and by that extremely impressive Heat Way culture that Riley built. But right now, they don’t have the firepower they need to be true contenders.
Butler knows it. But Riley doesn’t seem to care, or not care.
The Heat Way only works if it leads to a path forward, and there’s a deep irony here in this Butler debacle for the man who based his philosophy of continued greatness on the dangers of falling prey to your successes past.
Yes, Butler is neither an angel nor a sure thing. He is 35 years old. It has already worn out its welcome. He is injury prone. Him missing last year’s playoffs and then saying the Heat would have beaten the Celtics in that first-round series if he had been healthy sparked some of the this drama between the star and Riley.
Riley, so focused on what he is already done lost sight of what must be done now.
Three conference championship appearances in five years and two Finals berths were never supposed to be proof that things work in Miami. They should be proof that they need to do more.
Times are changing. The world evolves, whether you evolve with it or not. Trophy displays may gather dust, but convincing those who earned them is the only way. And the long-running The Disease Of More can infect even those smart enough to have coined the phrase in the first place.
The Jimmy Butler saga may have gone too far for this relationship to be salvaged, and it may indeed need to be sent off.
And so, once again, this highway attracts a star who has stepped aside with Riley.
But in an effort to prevent this from happening again and to modernize in every way necessary to return the Heat to where they belong, the Big Man might also want to focus on another piece of wisdom:
Doctor, heal yourself.
