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LeBron James and Pat Riley both sometimes wonder what might have been if their four-year partnership with the Miami Heat had lasted a whole lot longer.
After the Los Angeles Lakers unveiled a statue Sunday honoring Riley’s landmark career as the head coach of the 1980s Showtime teams, James and the current Lakers took the court and lost 111-98 to the Boston Celtics.
Riley and James praised each other Sunday, and both NBA icons also openly speculated about the paths not taken after James’ four-year Miami tenure, which ended more than a decade ago.
“I wish him nothing but the best, but I’m going to be selfish here and say I wish had him for another six or eight years,” Riley said. “Would have been great. But we’ll never know, will we?”
Riley was the Heat’s president — the job he still holds — when James famously left the Cleveland Cavaliers for South Beach in 2010 to join Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh. That superteam reached four NBA Finals and won two championships in their four outstanding years together, but James left to go back to Cleveland in 2014.
“I never said, ‘I’m going to go there for four years and decide to (leave),’” James said. “That’s just how the cards was played. But it’s human nature to look back and say, ‘Yeah, what could have been?’ That’s part of life. The four years that we had was great. Was able to pick up two chips. We lost two of them, unfortunately, but a lot of great memories. A lot of great time there. It would have been interesting to see what could have happened.”
When James left Miami, he cited his paramount desire to bring a championship to his native Northeast Ohio — a goal he accomplished in 2016 by beating the Golden State dynasty.
Riley has always said he understood James’ decision. While many observers also thought Miami’s salary cap situation at the time presented serious challenges to future title contention after the Heat lost to San Antonio in the 2014 NBA Finals, Riley clearly thinks those obstacles wouldn’t have been a match for James’ brilliance.
