Pat Riley Biography - A Family Of Athletes, From Basketball Player To Coach, Chronology, A Winning Philosophy, Active Beyond Baseball
nba season record times
1945-
American basketball coach
Currently president and head coach for the Miami Heat basketball team, Pat Riley has been an NBA coach for more than 20 years. He started as a coach for the Los Angeles Lakers before moving to the New York Knicks, and finally to the Miami Heat. His NBA regular season win-loss record in 2002 stood at a remarkable 1,085-502. Those 1,085 wins were second only to coach Lenny Wilkens. His record of 155 post-season wins was bettered only by Phil Jackson in the history of the NBA. Riley's 255 postseason games are an all-time NBA record. During the 1996-97 season, Riley was named one of the Top 10 Coaches of All-Time by a panel of sports journalists.
Riley's other accomplishments include 16 divisional championships, eight conference championships, and a total of four NBA championships. Named NBA coach of the year three times, Riley is the only NBA coach ever to have received this honor as coach of three different teams. From 1982 to 2001, Riley coached 19 playoffs in a row, a league record. He is also tied for the most playoffs for one coach. Riley has also coached nine NBA All-Star games. In addition, Riley has won 50 games in a single season and NBA record-breaking 17 times. He has taken his teams to victory 60 times in one season seven times, at least once with each of the three NBA teams he has coached.
Pat Riley
Riley reached a major milestone in the 2000-01 season when he became fastest the coach or manager to reach 1,000 wins—not just in the NBA, but in all four of the professional sports in North America.
Sketch by Michael Belfiore
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Patrick Riley was born in 1945 in Schenectady, New York, where he attended Linton High School. His was an athletic family; his father, Leon "Lee" Riley, was a professional baseball player. He played catcher and outfielder for the Philadelphia Blue Jays in 1944. Leon Riley went on to become a manager for the Blue Jays organization in the minor leagues. Pat Riley's brother Lee w…
After retiring as a player, Riley worked as a television broadcaster for the Lakers beginning in 1977. He stayed in this post until 1979. At the start of the 1979-80 season, Riley accepted an offer from Paul Westhead, the head coach of the Lakers to become his assistant coach. Riley took over as head coach of the Los Angeles Lakers early in the 1981-82 season. In his very first season in the top c…
Asked during this time to describe his winning philosophy that helped the Lakers perform so well, Riley told Cotton, "When I came in, I'd never coached anywhere before, so what I started doing was teaching a philosophy that I didn't know I'd even had. There were never any ABCs, but over the years there's definitely been a definitive series of things I believe in.…
Show Time: Inside the Lakers'Breakthrough Season. New York: Warner Books, 1988. Pat Riley's father, Lee Riley, was a professional baseball player who played for 22 years in the minor leagues for 21 different teams. He also played one season in the major leagues. This was in 1944, when he played for the Philadelphia Blue Jays. He was 38 years old when he began and ended his major leag…
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