NBA Hoops

Pat Riley, 77, has no plans to leave Miami Heat, feels ‘an obligation to finish this build’ as team president

Pat Riley, 77, has no plans to leave Miami Heat, feels 'an obligation to finish this build' as team president

Miami Heat president Pat Riley has no plans of ending his Hall of Fame career any time soon. He made that clear in the midst of his annual end-of-season news conference Monday.

“I’m 77 years old and right now I can do more pushups than you can do right now.” Riley said, while challenging a reporter to a pushup contest. “If you want to go to the mat, let’s go.”

That proud and defiant attitude has been a hallmark of Riley’s almost three decades with the Heat organization. It was also a staple of the latest team, which came just a few seconds away from another Finals appearance before losing to the Boston Celtics in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference finals last week.

“I definitely feel an obligation to finish this build,” Riley said. “And so if we’re three years into this build — then I don’t want to do another three years of just building this team. I think we’re in that window of internal improvement. We got a great, great, great player in Jimmy Butler, we know that.

“We have a lot of real experienced veterans and so we put together a team that got to the Eastern Conference finals and it was bitter, it was a bitter loss. The dragon hasn’t actually left my body yet from that loss. I was stunned, I was frustrated, I was angry, I was all of those things for the last week and now I’m beginning to move on past all of that, so I haven’t given that any thought at all.”

Riley, who won a title as coach of the Heat in 2006 and helped build the roster that won back-to-back titles in 2012 and 2013, admitted there are still plenty of moments when he sits with members of his staff and is invigorated by trying to get back to the top of the game.

“There are nights that I’m so excited about watching this game and the evolution of the game, and the players,” Riley said. “It’s so different than it was 20 years ago, 30 years ago, 40 years ago when I coached in L.A. It’s a different game, a different time, and we have to stay one step ahead of the posse, in order to stay one step away from…

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