Down To The Wire

Over two decades of coaching stratagems at your disposal, thousands of offensive possessions to draw upon, a multitude of options from which to choose. But sometimes it's best to not be too smart, which was the case for Pat Riley at the end of Game 5 of the NBA Finals. � Get the ball to Dwyane! Get the ball to Dwyane! � That's what the Miami Heat coach told his team in a timeout with 9.1 seconds left in the most crucial of situations: overtime, series tied 2-2, Heat trailing 100-99. Sometimes it's that simple. Get the ball to Dwyane. The Heat did as instructed, and Wade, resembling a thief fleeing from the police, dribbled around and through four Mavericks defenders, drew a foul, then canned two free throws that gave the Heat a remarkable 101-100 victory.� "Besides Dwyane," Riley would say afterward, "we did not have a second option." � Though Miami would still need one win in Dallas to earn Riley his seventh ring, Shaquille O'Neal his fourth and Wade his first, there could be little doubt, regardless of how the series played out, who would be remembered as the most dominant force of the most captivating NBA Finals A.J. (After Jordan). More than anything this series has been about the ascension of Wade into that select stratum of NBA superstars. In the middle three games in Miami, all Heat wins after two depressing defeats by an average of 12 points in Big D, Wade made 38 of 77 shots and 42 of 52 free throws. When all else failed-and even when it didn't-Riley would plant Wade on the perimeter of a 1-4 alignment and just tell him to do his thing. When Doug Collins was coaching the Bulls in the late '80s, he once described an end-of-the-game play he ran for Michael Jordan like this: "That was get Michael the ball and everybody get the f-- out of the way." So it has been with Wade. On Sunday's climactic play, Wade told Riley in the huddle that he wanted to go left, so Riley told O'Neal to move to that side of the floor to set a pick. That was pretty much the extent of the future Hall of Fame coach's involvement in that play.

Afterward the Mavericks weighed in with a few of their own D Wade-MJ comparisons, though of a far less flattering variety. Noting that Wade attempted the same number of free throws (25) as the Mavericks team in Game 5, reserve guard Darrell Armstrong complained, "This kid is getting calls Michael Jordan never got. The kid spins, fades away, we don't touch him, and he goes to the line? Incredible. What does the NBA want? Ratings? Is that what this is about?" Immediately after guard Devin Harris's last-second half-court heave bounced off the top of the backboard, Mavs owner Mark Cuban was in front of commissioner David Stern shouting profanity-laced insults about the officiating.

Charges that certain players get special protection are part of the league's lore, and Wade does fit the profile of an anointed one. It is nearly impossible to get the Heat guard to say something colorful, but it is also difficult to get him to say anything arrogant or caustic. The league will take that trade-off any day. About the only edge that crept into Wade's voice showed up after Game 4, a 98-74 Heat rout, when he was asked if he was surprised that the Mavs were daring him to shoot jumpers. "I think they said I can't shoot, right? So why would they contest my shots?"

Even after the Mavs' three-game meltdown, nobody doubted that they could get their act straightened out back in Dallas, where Cuban, who wore a Jerry Stackhouse jersey on Sunday night in honor of the feisty forward who was suspended (and questionably so) for Game 5 after a flagrant foul on O'Neal in Game 4, would pull out every scoreboard gimmick to fire up the home crowd. Stackhouse's return to the lineup would be treated like Eisenhower's return home after World War II. 'House supplies much of the Mavs' newfound fighting spirit (another legacy of this postseason). Sometimes literally so. During a Dallas-Utah game late last season, Stackhouse and Jazz rookie Kirk Snyder got into it, prompting Stackhouse to promise Snyder he would "kick [his] ass" later. Sure enough, when the game was over, 'House requested practice sweats from a Dallas equipment manager, found Snyder in the tunnel that led to the players' lot, bloodied his face with a couple of well-placed punches, returned to the locker room and reemerged a few minutes later nattily attired, as always, in a suit.

Even without Stackhouse, the Mavs did show some fire and brimstone on Sunday, something coach Avery Johnson had found lacking after their Game 4 disaster. The following day he moved his team from their Four Seasons digs in Miami to a modest hotel in Fort Lauderdale and assigned roommates for everyone. The mind reels at the thought of the bedtime conversation between the heavily tatted, jeri-curled Marquis Daniels and Pavel Podkolzin, the 7'5" native of Novosibirsk, Russia. Or the mental burden on Armstrong, who claimed he was tortured by Nowitzki's love of rap-German rap! To an NBA player accustomed to five-star isolation, having a roommate is equivalent to 40 lashes and 24 hours of Dr. Phil.

The hotel switch was a psychological ploy out of the Riley book. The difference between the coaches is that Johnson is far more lively than Riley and consistently outperformed His Mousseness at the pregame and postgame microphone. Television packagers are missing a great opportunity if they do not pursue Avery for what would be a certain daytime hit-" Judge Johnson," the alliterative and far more entertaining replacement for Judge Judy. Set it in a courtroom in New Orleans, Johnson's hometown, where his distinctive Louisiana patois would be most engaging as he pronounces judgment, with a mixture of anger, sarcasm and humor, on a hopeless parade of defendants.

But if the 41-year-old Johnson has outentertained the 61-year-old Riley, he has certainly not outcoached him. Indeed, if the Heat get the needed win in Dallas to bring the franchise its first championship, Riley will, like Wade, find himself anointed-or, in his case, reanointed-as a coaching alchemist who, through force of personality, the weight of his accomplishments and some savvy X-ing and O-ing, extracts gold from unpromising raw materials.

With a game still left to win, Riley would not say whether a Heat title would be sweeter than his previous ones in L.A. He tries to keep references to the '80s to a minimum-"Players don't want to hear how you did it back then," he says-but he can make a historical point digitally. "You look in that huddle, you see the ring on his finger," says reserve forward James Posey, "and that's even more motivation to go out there and get it done." One suspects a Heat title would mean more to Riley than any of those he won during Showtime, the last in 1988. There were always whispers that his success in Laker Land was the product of his team's talent rather than of his coaching acumen. If Riley were to bring Miami its first title, his stamp upon this one would be indelible, both as architect (as president, he added some seemingly disparate pieces in the off-season) and coach, but mostly as coach.

"Pat has always made it clear to me that whatever title he had, he always thought of himself as a coach," Heat owner Micky Arison said last Saturday. "I never forget that." Riley has called upon every weapon in his substantial gamesmanship arsenal, both in these Finals and throughout the season. During a huddle in the fourth quarter of Game 3, for example, Riley wrote season on his wipeboard and told the team, "This is our season we're playing for. Every possession, every play has to be ours." The Heat stoutly held on to a lead in a tense 98-96 victory. With veteran players such as O'Neal, Posey, Alonzo Mourning and Gary Payton, Riley frequently asks them for ideas.

Riley has pulled some big moments, in particular, out of the declining Payton, who has seemingly made no more than a half-dozen shots in this postseason. (He was, in fact, averaging 6.0 points per game) Several of them, however, have been daggers, including the Game 3 game-winning jumper (his only shot of the game) and a driving lefthanded layup (the shot banked so high off the backboard it almost went over it) that gave Miami a 99-98 lead in overtime on Sunday.