In his new book Shaq Uncut, O’Neal recounts an incident with Pat Riley, a man every bit a godfather figure in NBA lore.

“My ticket out of Miami was punched in mid-February 2008. There was a lot of tension between Pat and the players. So we’re about to start practice and  Jason Williams comes in about ten seconds late. Pat being Pat, he starts swearing at him and screaming, “Get the hell out of here!” …

“I tell Pat we’re a team and we need to stick together, not throw guys out of the gym. Pat is screaming at me and says if I don’t like it, then I should get the hell out of practice, too.

“That’s when I said, ‘Why don’t you make me?’

“I start taking a couple of steps towards Pat. Udonis Haslem steps in and I shove him out of the way. Then Zo tries to grab me. I threw him aside like he was a rag doll. Now it’s me and Riley face-to-face, jaw to jaw. I’m poking him in the chest and he keeps slapping my finger away and it’s getting nasty. Noisy, too. He’s yelling ‘(Expletive!)’ and I’m yelling back, ‘No, (expletive!)’”

Lest we forget, Pat Riley was Phil Jackson before Phil Jackson, Danny Ainge before Danny Ainge (the GM), and Stan Van Gundy after Stan Van Gundy.
Make no mistake, Riley can be a mean, conniving sum’bitch when pushed. But he runs a tight ship too, and he likes to win, even still.

When the 2010-11 Heat were on the rocks, losing 6 of 7 games with only a month left in the regular season, staring imminent collapse in the face, 1320 KFAN’s afternoon producer, Kevin Ferguson, and I speculated when exactly head coach Erik Spoelstra would be sent packing.

LeBron James had wept, Chris Bosh had been acting, well, like a Bosh, and Mike Bibby was dubbed one of the dribbling dead, for obvious reasons.

Someone compared LBJ to the Wizard of Oz’s cowardly lion and we ran with it in the afternoon “Flog” (Ferg’s live blog). Before long the creative juices began to flow freely and Ferg requested a Photoshop featuring Mike Bibby as Toto, which ultimately proved to be the most challenging of the following characters to create.

No word on whether or not Chris Bosh borrowed Dorothy’s ruby slippers to go with his evening gown.