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Monday, October 16
 
Riley will still get Heat to playoffs

By Mitch Lawrence
Special to ESPN.com

NEW YORK -- The news couldn't have been worse for the Miami Heat. You lose Alonzo Mourning, you lose your franchise player.
Pat Riley
Riley changed the Heat after last year's playoff elimination. Now he has more work to do.

But we'll go out on a limb and guarantee this: They're still making the playoffs.

They're still playing in the East, right? Last we checked, the East has no dominant centers and very few, if any, big-time scorers at power forward spot, correct?

Those are only two reasons we feel confident that the Heat can start printing playoff tickets today. And we haven't even gotten to the No. 1 reason. Remember the guy who's sitting in the No.1 chair on the Heat bench.

It's still Pat Riley, and he doesn't do lotteries.

Even without Mourning, look for Riley to get his newly-assembled team to a top-eight finish in the woefully weak East. He still has Eddie Jones, Brian Grant, Anthony Mason and Tim Hardaway, albeit maybe on just one leg, to win games. That's not too shabby. And Riley still will get his players to play defense at a higher level than 90 percent of the teams in the league.

"Losing Mourning knocks the Heat down some notches and really puts the East up for grabs," said one Eastern Conference VP yesterday. "But don't underestimate what Pat can do."

What Riley does is get the most out of his teams, as he's always done, particularly in New York and Miami. Without Mourning, the two-time reigning defensive player of the year, Miami's defense will drop a level or two. But remember that Jones, Mason and Grant are formidable defenders and the Heat's schemes will be rock-solid as ever. It's all because of Riley, who will probably get more out of front-line scrubs like Todd Fuller and Duane Causwell than anyone will believe possible.

"The big thing with Pat is that he always gets his teams to buy into what he's doing," said Knicks coach Jeff Van Gundy, a former Riley aide. "He told me early on, 'if players don't buy into what you want to do, you have no chance.' But his teams are always buying into his philosophy."

Mason
Mason

Grant
Grant

Jones
Jones

Please understand, nobody here is saying the Heat are marching to the Finals. You just don't lose a player of Mourning's fire and toughness and defensive prowess and move merrily on. And offensively, there are big problems. Grant and Mason are limited and can be covered by single men. That means Jones won't get open looks off rotation because defenses don't have to double down. Who knows how much Hardaway has left? But don't forget, this is one ugly conference, and Miami still is a top-eight team.

"I will caution whoever is jumping off the Miami bandwagon not to," Orlando coach Doc Rivers said. "Riley has proven he's a trerrific coach. And they still have Eddie Jones, Tim Hardaway, Brian Grant and Anthony Mason. In the East, that's pretty formidable."

The only conference team with a dominant center is Atlanta, but Dikembe Mutombo is not a scorer, and the Hawks have precious little else around him. The team with the top interior offensive players is Charlotte, but Derrick Coleman and Elden Campbell didn't exactly get the Hornets too far last spring. They were first-round casualties, even with the homecourt edge.

When you play the Knicks, you don't have to worry about double-teaming Patrick Ewing in the post, or running out to cover him when he's 15 feet from the basket. They're a total perimeter team now with Allan Houston, Latrell Sprewell and Glen Rice.

Orlando has two perimeter studs in Grant Hill and Tracy McGrady, but zero at the four and five. All these kids playing for the Pacers up front now are perimeter players, not inside forces. The Sixers play hard, rebound, defend ... and Allen Iverson and Larry Brown will be at each other's throats.

See? The Heat might not be the last team standing in the East. But when all is said and done, Pat Riley will get his team into the postseason. At the least.

Rim Shots

Iverson
Iverson

  • Lost in Allen Iverson's rap-CD controversy is that the Sixers' star reported to camp 17 pounds below what the team wanted and did practically nothing over the offseason to get his body ready for another season. To start camp, Iverson was at 155 pounds, when the Sixers wanted him in at at least 172. Iverson's total disregard for conditioning is nothing new. Last season, he consistently refused to do weight-training prescribed to give him some muscle mass in his shoulders. No, Larry Brown wasn't happy in the least. "Everything about Allen leaves a bad taste in Larry's mouth," said one team member.

  • Close friends of Shaquille O'Neal's think he'll play only four more seasons, even with his new three-year extension that will put him a Lakers uniform the next six seasons. They say they can see Shaq, now 28, hanging it up at age 32, depending, of course, on how many more rings and MVP trophies he collects over next few seasons.

  • Grant Hill, still with five pins in his ankle, has done very little in the way of running and going through live practices/scrimmages with the Magic. His pre-game regimen has been almost exclusively shooting jumpers. No one knows how much he can drive and stop and jump and push off the ankle, if at all.

  • In his meeting with Iverson, David Stern did bring up John Rocker's suspension. "I could do what (Bud) Selig did," the NBA commish said. Stern could have dropped the hammer on Iverson. But in low-keying the entire affair, Stern smartly didn't turn Iverson into a martyr.

  • Players have started to receive their share of licensing fees. Everyone gets a check for $35,000.

  • We could get a ruling on the Joe Smith-T'wolves cap-circumvention case any day now. Hearings started Monday before arbitrator Kenneth Dam. Beforehand, the T-wolves called the Knicks, old hands in cap-circumvention cases, to recommend a law firm. And the T-wolves hired the firm, too.

  • Yes, that was Ron Artest going through the entire rookie orientation. The Bulls' second-year player was tossed from last year's session after breaking the no-females-allowed rule. So he had to take the program over.

    Mitch Lawrence, who covers the NBA for the New York Daily News, writes a regular NBA column for ESPN.com.






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