Shaq acquisition was biggest ever, Riley says
O’Neal era remembered as HOF looms
MIAMI— This is not, Pat Riley stresses, revisionist history. And it also is not, he insists, getting caught up in the moment that will have Shaquille O'Neal on Friday becoming the third former Miami Heat player to enter the Naismith Memorial BasketballHall of Fame.
"I'll say this, and I mean this," Riley says during a relaxed moment this past week, "Shaq's acquisition was bigger than any acquisition that we ever made, including the Big Three."
Bigger than LeBron James. Bigger than Chris Bosh. Andbigger, Riley says, than the player who helped Riley turn around the franchise around upon their dual arrivals in 1995, Alonzo Mourning.
"Zo was big," Riley says, "but getting Shaquille changed everything for our franchise."
With James, Bosh and DwyaneWade, theHeat advanced to four consecutive NBA Finals from 2011 to 2014, winning two championships. With Mourning, Riley took a second-tier expansion team into arguably the most compelling playoff rivalry of the late-'90s, Heat vs. New York Knicks.
But even after a contentious ending withO'Neal in 2008 that left the two sniping, Riley says at a moment such as this, with O'Neal about to be enshrined in Springfield, Mass., it is essential to appreciate the magnitude of the moment when O'Neal arrived in July 2004.
"The seminal moment," Riley says, "to reallymakeus really, really legitimate. He turned our franchise around. He gave us real legitimacy." "Shaq's acquisition was bigger than any acquisition that we ever made, including the Big Three," Pat Riley said.