MIAMI — If all of the indications prove right, Miami Heat president and potentate Pat Riley is, at age 78, about to score what would feel like the last hurrah of an epic NBA career. It would also afford him a final, resounding I-told-you-so, even though he would never tell you so.
Riley made basketball matter in Miami, a football town, and has orchestrated three championship parades down Biscayne Boulevard since 2006. Yet to a growing or at least loud subset of critical fans he had become the aging leader whose ability to close a big deal had left him. The standard he set was so high that reaching two Finals the past four years was not good enough as the whales he failed to boat became the evidence used against him.
Now: Damian Lillard, certified whale. Seven-time All-Star point guard off a 32.2-point scoring season. A 3-point marksman who made the NBA’s 75th Anniversary all-time team.
Big Game Dame is close enough for Heat fans to anticipate and already photoshop into a Miami uniform. He would be the biggest Heat get by free agency or trade since the insane summer of 2010 when LeBron James took his talents to South Beach. Bigger than Alonzo Mourning, bigger than Jimmy Butler, big enough to give Riley one last shot to go out on top.
Riley’s resume is too full of accomplishments — nine championship rings as player, assistant coach, head coach or executive — to require any final bow of vindication. But Lillard being adamant on wanting a trade to Miami would give it to him just the same, and it would be deserved. To Miami, but also in NBA history.
The great ones having the uncommon chance to go out on top is always special in sports, and Lillard joining forces with Butler and Bam Adebayo in Miami would give Riley that opportunity.
The window is small. Lillard turns 33 on July 15. Butler will turn 34 before next season starts.
And we will pardon a 78-year-old team president for thinking right now, not maybe someday. (As my mother used to say very late in her long life, there comes a time when you don’t buy green bananas ...)
We might be getting ahead of ourselves. Anticipation will do that. A handful of other teams also want Lillard. Utah’s stockpile of draft picks might form a better offer than Miami’s Tyler Herro-led package. Philadelphia could dangle rising star Tyrese Maxey.
But Lillard has shown only loyalty in 11 seasons with Portland and has earned the goodwill to have his franchise honor his insistence on joining the Heat. Likewise, would another team want to trade for a player knowing he wants to play elsewhere?
Superstar players get what they want in the modern NBA, and if that truth holds, Lillard to Miami seems all but certain.
Because of that, losing on Lillard now, seeing him traded elsewhere against his wishes, would be a devastating blow.
Landing him would be the opposite — and continue a stunning run of seismic star acquisition in South Florida sports.
The Miami Dolphins traded for the NFL’s fastest, most dynamic receiver in Tyreek Hill, and in his first season here he caught 119 passes for 1,710 yards, scored eight touchdowns and instantly unlocked the potential of quarterback Tua Tagovailoa.
The Florida Panthers traded for Matthew Tkachuk and in his first season here he scored 40 goals with 109 points and led the Cats to their first Stanley Cup Final in 27 years.
Inter Miami landed Lionel Messi — a giddy parade of five words that still sounds ludicrously unbelievable — and his arrival has electrified a young franchise and all of Major League Soccer while lifting the stature of the entire sport in America.
Lillard to the Heat would fit. He is that good at what he does. That difference-making.
The Heat won their first championship because Riley had drafted Dwyane Wade and paired him with an aging but still dominant Shaquille O’Neal.
The second and third rings and parades came because James and Chris Bosh were acquired to join Wade to form the Big 3 and usher in the era of star players taking charge of their their own futures as Lillard is doing now.
The fourth Heat franchise title, and 10th of Riley’s career, would happen because the maestro found enough magic left in the doubted wand to somehow keep together the core of Butler and Adebayo while adding to it one of the NBA’s elite, dynamic scorers.
And it must not be underestimated the importance of Lillard believing enough in that existing Butler/Adebayo core to think he can be the missing championship piece. Miami traded for one and drafted the other, so Lillard’s interest in the Heat starts with moves the team president made in 2017 and ‘19.
Pat Riley’s arena office overlooks a breathtaking view of Biscayne Bay. Now, his elusive next whale is swimming somewhere down in those emerald waters, tantalizingly close enough to see.
