Riley leaves tweeting to others

Yes, Pat Riley is lurking in the Twittersphere.

His, however, is not a burner account. It is, in fact, the furthest thing from the critiques, denunciations, cheap shots offered from the accounts linked to former Philadelphia 76ers general manager Bryan Colangelo, posts that led to his resignation.

Instead, the Heat’s iconic team president has what in essence is a secret account, one that is set up to monitor accounts of players, co-workers and others associated with the industry.

Riley’s presence on Twitter has been active since November 2011, an account without a profile photo or biographic information.

Twitter sleuths have already seized the trail, with more than 1,000 following, in essence, nothing.

In the wake of the Colangelo mess and other burner accounts — ones set up anonymously as vehicles for venting — Riley was asked about his eye in the Twitter sky. He initially confused the question for one about burner phones, devices designed to make it difficult to track communications.

“I still have this kind of phone that flips,” he displayed at AmericanAirlines Arena after last week’s NBA draft. “Is that what a burner phone looks like? I don’t have any.”

When it was clarified that the question

was about Twitter, he addressed to the questioning reporter what has been known for years.

“I’ve tweeted one time,” he said. “I do have a Twitter account, only because I need to follow a lot of people like you, which is very interesting. I actually get alerts on all you guys.

“But I never tweeted out anything except one picture — my boss and his wife and myself and my wife and three championship trophies. I think it’s out there. I think I put it down as soon as I put it up.”

The approach by Riley is not unusual, with several in the industry maintaining anonymous Twitter accounts as a means of monitoring the league. Other members of the Heat staff have similar accounts, with no outgoing tweets posted, set up for vigilance not vitriol. (There has, however, been ongoing speculation over the years about burner accounts belonging to Heat players, with Golden State Warriors forward Kevin Durant among NBA players who have owned up to such subterfuge.)

Riley’s foray into Twitter offers insight into the eclectic mix he has followed.

The first account Riley followed was that of LeBron James, at a juncture more than a season after the forward joined the Heat from the Cleveland Cavaliers during 2010 free agency.

Others among Riley’s initial follows were team owner Micky Arison, coach Erik Spoelstra and the Heat’s general account.

To date, Spoelstra has posted exactly one more tweet than Riley, a single offering, on Oct. 7, 2010, at the end of the Heat’s first training camp with James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh that read, “Great Training Camp, fired up for the season.” Posting under his own name, Spoelstra has amassed 34.5 thousand followers, while following only 14 accounts, with Wade, James and Bosh the only players followed.

By contrast, Arison’s robust Twitter account has included 14,800 tweets since he joined Twitter in August 2011, going into the weekend following 249 and with 222,574 followers. Arison was fined a reported $500,000 by the NBA in 2011 for violating the league’s ban on commenting during the ongoing lockout, responding to a post with a comment of, “Honestly u r barking at the wrong owner,” a post that was quickly deleted.

Unlike his father, Nick Arison, the Heat’s chief executive officer, does not have a public social-media presence.

For his part, Riley said there are no secondary accounts, no vehicles to publicly vent anonymously.

“I don’t have that stuff, get into those kind of conversations,” he said. “I really don’t know how people do it. I understand how you have to do it. But I don’t understand how the average person who wants to live a normal life gets into arguments with people they don’t know.

“You need to do that. I don’t need to do that.”

Riley