How Pat Riley Quit on the Knicks

The following are excerpts from “Blood in the Garden: The Flagrant History of the 1990s New York Knicks” by Chris Herring. They have been edited and condensed. The book was released Tuesday. Herring is a senior writer at Sports Illustrated.

The infighting within the Knicks’ locker room seemed to be catching up with them.

Perhaps it was the stress of getting so close — one win away from the 1994 N.B.A. championship, before a crushing Game 7 loss to Houston — only to watch it all slip away. Or perhaps it was the new campaign getting off to a rocky start, with a pedestrian 12-12 mark by Christmas and a five-game losing streak — their longest in Coach Pat Riley’s four years there.

Whatever the reason, the squabbles were apparent.

In early December, Riley got into it with the veteran guard Doc Rivers, with the men loudly trading expletives in Riley’s office during a spat over Rivers’s role. The argument ended with Rivers asking Riley to release him from the team.

During a separate standoff that month, Riley’s two best players, Patrick Ewing and John Starks, traded barbs in Atlanta after Ewing declined to pass to an open Starks, drawing his ire.

When Starks yelled at Ewing, Ewing snarled back, essentially telling Starks to know his place. The blowup was a breaking point, as Starks felt teammates had frozen him out of the offense during his recent slump. And while some players felt Riley had previously given Starks too much leash to shoot, no one felt that way after the loss to the Hawks.

“Who are you to ever question anyone’s shot selection?” Riley screamed at Starks inside the visiting locker room. “Did anyone here ever say a word to you about [Game 7]?” The coach was referring to Starks’s disastrous 2-for-18 showing against Houston in the finals.

Starks, almost in tears during the dressing-down, would be benched the following game.

But deep down, Riley was the one beginning to feel distant. And change felt inevitable.

‘He went quiet on us’

During that last week of December, Riley gave his players time off from the grind. He took time for himself, too, chartering a jet on New Year’s Eve to Aspen, Colo., to visit Dick Butera, a longtime friend and wealthy real estate developer.

Riley had a weighty issue to discuss. “I don’t know if this [situation with the Knicks] is going to work out,” Riley told Butera and other friends while at the developer’s home.

As Riley dropped his bombshell, Butera countered with one: He and a group of deep-pocketed acquaintances planned to make a run at buying the Miami Heat. Riley said he’d consider being the team’s coach, Butera said.

With a contract extension offer from the Knicks already in hand, Riley was far from desperate. But knowing he had a friend with a decent chance of purchasing a team may have emboldened him in his dealings with the Knicks. In January, after the Aspen trip, he sent a counteroffer to the Knicks, asking for a stake in ownership and a promotion to team president. These asks — which Riley said would assuage his concerns about the Knicks’ frequent ownership changes — were in addition to the $3 million salary New York had already offered.

In late January, Riley met with Rand Araskog, the chief executive of ITT, which controlled 85 percent of the Madison Square Garden properties. (Cablevision owned 15 percent.) Garden president Dave Checketts gave Araskog a heads-up that Riley would likely request a 10 or 20 percent share of the Knicks as part of his extension.

“I have to discuss something with you,” Riley said, pulling out a leather briefcase to talk numbers. Before he got another word out, Araskog stopped him. The answer was no.

Riley pursed his lips. “I’m sorry to hear that. But I understand,” he said, declining to press the issue. The meeting concluded shortly after.

“He went quiet on us after that,” Checketts says. “He’d only talk basketball with us.”

‘I’m finished in New York’

It was mid-February 1995, the first game after the All-Star break, and the Knicks were getting drilled on the road by a Detroit club 12 games under .500. By halftime, they trailed by 25. A red-faced Riley responded by punching a hole in the visiting locker room’s blackboard.

The team’s play that night wasn’t all that was bothering Riley. Butera had just been informed he wouldn’t be getting the Miami Heat. “He’d kept telling me, ‘I’ll definitely come with you if you can buy the Heat,’ ” Butera recalled.

But even after that plan fell through, a different opportunity remained.

That same month, Micky Arison, chairman of Carnival Cruise Lines, took over as the majority owner of the Heat, and had a series of calls with Butera, phone records would later show. And while it’s not clear what was discussed — Butera denied Riley was the topic of conversation — it wasn’t long after that Arison sought to meet Riley when the Knicks were in town.

On the morning of Feb. 16, Arison, who’d grown up a Knicks fan, arrived at Miami Arena early. He waited in a corridor that led to the court, wanting to watch the Knicks’ shootaround. Riley was fiercely competitive and private, so no, Arison couldn’t stay.

“I was curious, based on his reputation,” Arison said. “The fact that he refused? I respected it.”

But as Riley prepared to leave with his players, the new owner was standing at the exit. He pulled Riley aside, asking if he could talk with him for a few minutes.

Arison’s persistence stopped Riley in his tracks. Since he’d taken the Knicks job, Riley had prioritized loyalty. The idea of being all the way in, or all the way out. Riley didn’t believe in fraternizing with anyone outside the team. So could he really agree to meet with Arison now, after a team workout, just hours before a game?

Surprisingly, Riley nodded. Yes, he’d meet with Arison in the tunnel.

But just for a few minutes.

Arison didn’t need long, though. All he needed to know was that Riley was open to a conversation — one they could presumably finish at a later point.

That point came in May, after the Knicks suffered a bitter Game 7 loss to Reggie Miller and the Indiana Pacers in the Eastern Conference semifinals. Maybe an hour after the Knicks’ season ended, Butera’s phone rang. It was Riley.

“Are you still friendly with the guy who owns the Heat?” he asked Butera.

“Yeah, I am. He’s a good guy. Why?”

“Because I’m done. I’m just done,” Riley responded. “All I can tell you is, I’m finished in New York.”

Butera wanted more detail. The agitated tone in Riley’s voice suggested something aside from the defeat itself had taken place. And Butera could hear noise in the background of the call. So he asked Riley where he was calling from — especially while discussing such a potentially explosive subject.

“I’m calling you from my cellphone. I’m on the team bus,” Riley said.

That struck Butera. Riley was so angry, he didn’t care that he might be within earshot of other people.

“Make it happen,” Riley told Butera. “I don’t want to be here anymore.”

‘That’s just how Pat is’

Butera met with Arison in Long Beach, Calif., on one of Arison’s cruise ships.

“What does he want?” Arison asked.

“He wants $50 million for 10 years,” Butera said.

Arison laughed. No N.B.A. coach, not even Riley, was making $3 million a year, let alone $5 million. “What does he really want?” Arison asked.

Butera reiterated his stance. Riley, already the highest-paid coach in the sport at $1.5 million a season, wanted $50 million over 10 years to run the show for Arison in Miami.

Arison sat still for a moment. The asking price was a small fortune. But paying it — and getting perhaps the best coach in basketball to take over a listless organization — could prove worthwhile if Riley turned the Heat into a winner.

“OK,” Arison said. “What else does he want to get this done?”

Butera and Riley soon compiled a list of asks in a four-page, 14-point memo. Riley wanted an immediate 10 percent ownership of the team and another 10 percent share over the course of his deal. He also wanted Arison to loan him money to pay taxes on the initial 10 percent stake.

He also wanted complete control over Miami’s basketball operations, and to be named the team president. Riley wanted Arison to purchase his sprawling homes near Los Angeles and New York City. He wanted a limo service to and from games in Miami. He wanted credit cards and a $300 per diem.

Butera took a copy of the memo to Arison at a bar at Los Angeles International Airport on June 5. Arison’s eyes narrowed when he saw the per diem.

“He couldn’t understand how someone getting a deal worth tens of millions would ask for such a nickel-and-dime sort of thing,” Butera recalled. “But that’s just how Pat is.”

‘Wind this up’

As Butera and Riley were solidifying things with Arison in early June, Riley’s agent, the Los Angeles attorney Ed Hookstratten, was more than hinting to Checketts that Riley had finished his Knicks career, despite having another year left on his contract.

“You and Pat have got to wind this up,” Hookstratten told Checketts during a June 7 meeting in Beverly Hills, urging him to let Riley out of his deal for a clean divorce. But Checketts wanted to talk with Riley.

Checketts said when he and Riley met two days later at the coach’s home in Greenwich, Conn., Riley was noncommittal. “I’m having a hard time with [the Indiana] loss,” Riley said. “I’m having a hard time figuring out the extension. I’m having a hard time with all of it.”

Checketts backed off, thinking he needed to give Riley space to decide.

One day went by. Then a second. And a third. Around then, Riley asked assistant coach Jeff Van Gundy to quietly grab Riley’s things from his office. The following day, June 13, Riley met with his assistants to inform them: He was planning to resign, but wanted them to keep the news private for a few more days, as he wasn’t ready to tell the front office or the media.

By June 15, Riley was ready. That day, Ken Munoz, the Knicks general counsel, was in his office when a fax came through his machine. It was a letter from Hookstratten’s law firm.

Riley, one of the N.B.A.’s greatest coaches, and the Knicks’ best since Red Holzman, had faxed his resignation.

And with that, the man who had taken a 39-win Knicks club and squeezed 51, 60, 57, and 55 victories out of it in four years while coming up just short of a championship was officially out the door.

By the time the fax arrived and began making waves throughout the New York media, Riley was at 40,000 feet on a flight to Greece, likely to tune out the noise of the sonic boom he’d just triggered.