Great Basketball Coaches (Part 3)
Rick Pitino:
Rick Pitino is the current coach for University of Louisville. He has also served as the coach at Boston University, Providence College as well as University of Kentucky. Pitino was in the NBA as a coach for New York Knicks and Boston Celtics.
He is the only men’s coach in the history of NCAA to lead 3 teams into the Final Four. He is also a successful author and motivational speaker. During his career so far, he has gathered an impressive record of 521 wins and 191 losses. In 1987, Pitino became
the head coach of New York Knicks, improving their game drastically in just 2 years.
After his run with Knicks, Pitino coached Boston Celtics, where he had a rough time trying to get the same results as he had before. Other than basketball, Pitino has also written several books. He is the author of a self-help book by the name “Success is
a Choice” and has also published an autobiography called “Born to Coach”.
Patrick James Riley:
Patrick James Riley was born on 20th of March, 1945. He is currently the president of Miami Heat and has been one of the greatest NBA coaches in history. He remained the head coach of 5 championship teams and assistant coach to one more.
Before Miami, he had coached Los Angeles Lakers as well as New York Knicks. He won the NBA Coach of the Year award 3 times and coached the NBA All-Star team 9 times. In 1996, he was inaugurated into the list of the 10 greatest coaches in NBA.
After he was done playing basketball, he came back as a broadcaster for the Lakers in 1977. During 1979-80 season, Jack McKinney- the Lakers coach at that time- suffered a deadly accident that promoted the assistant coach, Paul Westhead. This allowed Riley
to become the assistant coach there.
After Westhead got fired from his position, Jerry West and Pat Riley became co-coaches. In his new position, Riley led the Lakers to 4 NBA Finals. He won the first one against Philadelphia 76ers and lost the second one next season to the same team. However,
Riley defeated 76ers again in the following year to get his second Finals win.
They won once again in 1987 against the Celtics. The 87’s Lakers team was the best one of all time. Riley was re-signed as the Lakers' coach in 1990. Rumours had it that his resignation was due to players' mistreatment and anger problem. After his run with
the Lakers, Riley got a job as a commentator at NBC.
He worked there for a year and then accepted the position of head coach for New York Knicks in 1991. By 1993, he had led the Knicks in their best ever season record. Riley became the first and only coach to be in the Finals game 7 with two different teams,
but unfortunately losing it.
In 1995, he decided to change his team to Miami Heat. This move was quite controversial as he still had a year remaining on his contract. In order to resolve the issue, Heat had to send their 96's first round pick and 1 million dollars in cash to the Knicks.
After the matter was sorted out, Riley went on to get his third Coach of the Year award.
In 2002, Miami Heat were going through a cold season, with a disappointing 36-46 finish. Riley was so angry with his team's performance that he claimed he was going to “fire himself”. In 2004, he left coaching temporarily and became a fulltime General Manager
but later resumed coaching in 2005. Riley permanently retired from basketball on 28th of April, 2008.
(To be continued in Part 4)
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