The Lakers to honor Pat Riley with a statue on Star Plaza

The Los Angeles Lakers will unveil a statue of Pat Riley. The Los Angeles franchise, the most important in basketball history, will thus honor one of its most important figures, as well as one of the greatest characters to have ever passed through the NBA.

The 79-year-old coach spent 11 years with the Lakers (1979-90). After stepping down following the team’s defeat to the Suns in the playoffs, he moved to the east coast to coach the Knicks in 1991. In 1995 he took the head coach’s position at Miami Heat, where he remains in charge.

His glittering career will be rewarded by the Los Angeles franchise, to which he belonged as both a player and coach. “One of the greatest coaches of all time. The Lakers are proud to announce that Pat Riley’s legacy will be cemented and his statue will find a home on Star Plaza,” read the statement that the institution has posted on its social networks.

Pat Riley’s story with the Lakers is extraordinary. Chosen seventh overall in the 1967 draft of the best league in the world by the San Diego Rockets, in 1970 he headed to the Los Angeles franchise to join Elgin Baylor, Jerry West and, later, Wilt Chamberlain. With the last two (Baylor was injured at the start of that season) he won the 1972 ring, a historic relief for a franchise that kept reaching the Finals between the 60s and 70s, but that always clashed with its bête noire, Bill Russell’s Celtics.

Riley also stood out in the NFL and was chosen in the draft the same year he arrived in the basketball competition, finally opting for the NBA.

Riley earns his spurs in LA

Pat played his last season with the Phoenix Suns before retiring in 1976. In 1979, he became an assistant with the Lakers at just 34 years old, working under Jack McKinney first and then Paul Westhead, who was hired after his predecessor was fired. In his first season, he won the championship, something he repeated on four more occasions in the 1980s, when he took over from Westhead on the condition that Jerry West would be with him on the bench in the early stages of his mandate. All this took place within a context of change: Jerry Buss bought the franchise and David Stern became NBA commissioner - a competition that was trying to escape the fight with the ABA and in the 1970s, when television audiences had fallen and the future was shaky.

That all changed with Riley as Lakers coach. Showtime was then established, a style of play that allowed the NBA to once again boast the most captivating game on the planet. In nine seasons as Lakers coach, the team always surpassed 50 wins in the regular season, reaching 60 on five occasions, which they surpassed in four consecutive seasons. They also reached the Finals on seven occasions.

Riley won the Best Coach award in 1990, something he repeated in 1993 and 1997, with the Knicks and Heat respectively. The high level shown on a sustained basis by the Lakers even caused the North American competition to change the rules that stated that the coach with the best record in each Conference would coach in the All Star, preventing the legendary coach, who almost always had the most outstanding record, from repeating.