Pat Riley in Armani is an icon on its own. Anyone from the ’80s would know he had his moment. Standing patiently on the sidelines, his fashion wasn’t so quiet or subtle after all. He shot commercials, appeared on magazine covers, and much more. Was he stealing the thunder from the players? Perhaps not. However, the sentiments were not the same on both sides. In his recent interview on The Dan Le Batard Show, the former coach reflected on that golden era as well as when it all stopped.

He was the head coach of the Los Angeles Lakers during the Showtime Era. Along with Riley’s discipline, his iconic Italian highwaist fashion was also famous. Riley even featured on the 1989 GQ fashion cover. Athlete popularity had just begun to take over the world, and many like Magic Johnson often featured on magazine covers. The reason behind Riley maintaining such a classy image was to best represent his most important role as a coach who builds a billion-worth team.

“The fact that I became GQ or whatever it is or Armani this tremendous respect because I think all coaches should conduct themselves. If you’re running the most important part of building a multibillion dollar organization that frontman has to not only present himself in a manner that people will be respected,” he noted.

He also wrote books. Now, cut to the present, he feels it was a terrible decision. He says he wrote certain things that the players didn’t like at all. Furthermore, he felt that he got too much of the spotlight, which he believes should belong to the players. 

Riley explained how he stopped it all when he arrived in Miami for the Miami Heat. “It was a terrible time for me to be writing those books because the players didn’t like it,” Riley said. “I stopped doing all those things when I came here…I stopped doing commercials. I stopped being in the center of everything because that’s where the players should be and I think a coach has to be around the periphery of that circle with them in the center,” he shared. 

He was no longer at the center of attention but kept guiding the players from behind. Speaking of the 80s, he also talked about the thing on which he remained fixated.

Pat Riley recounted conflicts with players due to coaching style

During the interview, the former coach recounted that his strict coaching style and his rules led to some conflicts with the players. Sometimes, the players were unable to handle it. As Riley himself claimed in the interview, he didn’t take the players’ money but their pride and ego. In this case, the conflicts were natural, and he was very well aware of it as well.

“I can remember a couple of skirmishes with players who would simply say, ‘Don’t talk to me that way.’ And they were right,” Riley said. He recalled that back in the ’80s, he wanted to win and hence his method was tough. He understood that pushing players physically to this level naturally caused such issues. To some extent, he was okay with that. Over time, he developed other ways of explaining things to the players. 

“I began to mellow as I got older as a coach because I knew how to relay things differently…I was starving, you know, in 1979-80. I was happy to be the traveling secretary… but I wanted something more,” he explained. While his principles still remain the same, he says a significant difference has come in his ways of tackling things.