Riley, Pat

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    Pat Riley, Once Front and Center, Reigns in the Background

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    Riley’s decades in the N.B.A. have given him plenty of stories to tell. But the formerly flashy coach of the Knicks, Heat and Lakers is keeping a low profile — “the boss he thinks you should be.”The network camera was drawn to Pat Riley after Jimmy Butler’s 22-foot jumper landed like a kick to the collective groin of the Milwaukee Bucks late in Game 4 of Miami’s first-round playoff series upset. While Butler, soon to complete a 56-point masterpiece, pranced in full-throated fashion, there sat Riley, a gray-haired Buddha, arms folded across his suit jacket and tie, smiling without celebrating, blinking but not moving.No surprise, really. By this point in a long basketball life, what has Riley not already seen that would make him compromise on his veneer of calculated, unflappable control?Circulating online, the clip was another striking visual to add to the Riley collection. From the 1966 national championship game in which a Texas Western squad dominated by Black players defeated his all-white Kentucky team to his tenured role as the Heat’s president, Riley has been tethered to basketball history of tectonic magnitude.True, the 1970s version of Riley is most memorably recalled as a role player practically riding piggyback on the great Jerry West while leaving the court upon the Los Angeles Lakers’ clinching of the only title West ever won as a player. From the 1980s on, Riley moved front and center, stylishly coifed.Riley coached the Heat to a championship in the 2005-6 season, with Dwyane Wade and Shaquille O’Neal leading the team on the court. Miami beat the Dallas Mavericks in six games.Rhona Wise/European Pressphoto AgencyHe has played, coached or been chief executive for a team in a championship game or series for an extraordinary seven consecutive decades — the most recent being the Heat’s 2020 N.B.A. finals loss to the Lakers. Had there been an award for most venerable personality, the man who inspired Michael Douglas’s Gordon Gekko look for the 1987 film “Wall Street” would have to be its inaugural designee.Riley’s run as a coach and executive is arguably the most remarkable of all, given the generational shifts he has withstood. West is a front-office Lakers legend but was a reluctant three-season coach. Phil Jackson has more than double the head coaching titles (11-5), but he took on only star-laden rosters and was a bust as Knicks president. Red Auerbach deserves credit for coaching or assembling 16 of the Celtics’ 17 title teams, but most were achieved in a nascent league in which players had no freedom of movement.Riley coached the Lakers from 1981 to 1990, winning four championships with the future Hall of Famers Magic Johnson, right, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, left.Andrew D. Bernstein/NBAE, via Getty ImagesRiley didn’t win a championship during his four seasons with the Knicks in the early 1990s, but they made it to the N.B.A. finals in 1994, when they lost to Houston in seven games.Andrew D. Bernstein/NBAE, via Getty ImagesRiley did inherit a championship cast in Los Angeles, but he steered it to dynastic prominence and four titles. He made the Knicks matter again in the 1990s, however tortured — his word — he remains from not getting them across the finish line in the 1994 finals. He turned Miami’s nowhere expansion franchise into a contender and three-time champion.But we likely won’t hear much, if anything at all, from Riley on himself, the injury-plagued Heat or the Knicks during their Eastern Conference semifinal series. It’s not breaking news that he has ceded the organizational microphone to Erik Spoelstra, the coach he handpicked to succeed him in 2008 and who has remained in place well beyond the four-year Miami residency of LeBron James and the franchise’s last title in 2013.As far back as 2012, I sampled the Heat locker room for a column on how Riley had stepped away from the spotlight that once couldn’t resist him. Dwyane Wade, who joined the Heat in 2003, said, “For the most part, he stays back, stays out of the way when it comes to the players, and he’s been doing that for a couple of years.”Riley rarely speaks publicly anymore, but he has come out to support Wade, right, who spent more than a decade with the Heat.Michael Reaves/Getty ImagesRiley declined a request to talk about why his once-commanding voice is now seldom heard with rare exceptions — typically to acknowledge revered service, as in the recent cases of Wade’s election to the Basketball Hall of Fame and the Heat veteran Udonis Haslem’s upcoming retirement. Feelers to others affiliated with the Heat were met with a familiar refrain: Riley does not want anyone but Spoelstra and his players speaking publicly during the playoffs.Better then to consult someone whose employment doesn’t depend on him. Jeff Van Gundy, a Riley protégé who became his coaching antagonist after Riley’s stormy departure from New York in 1995, said: “He morphed into the boss that he always wanted, the boss he thinks you should be. Stay behind the scenes. Do your job.”Dave Checketts, who in 1991 hired Riley to coach the Knicks, recalled a phone conversation in which West, with whom Riley occasionally clashed during the Lakers’ Showtime era, warned him, “You’re going to have to figure out how to handle the press because Pat will lose his mind when someone says something he doesn’t want out there.”Said Checketts: “And Pat did say when he came, during hours and hours of conversation, that we needed to speak in one voice. That’s why I give him tremendous credit for what he’s done in Miami — he’s lived by what he’s espoused. And Spoelstra has been a great spokesman, too.”Six years ago, during my last extended conversation with Riley, he did veer off the agreed-upon interview topic — Magic Johnson’s brief ascension to the Lakers’ presidency. When I complimented him for refusing to tank, for remaining competitive despite losing James to Cleveland and Chris Bosh to a medical issue, Riley said:LeBron James, Wade and Chris Bosh spent four seasons together on the Heat, winning two championships. Riley was team president, after handing the coaching reins to Erik Spoelstra in 2008.Hans Deryk/Reuters“Players come and go, great players. When LeBron left, that was the most shocking thing to me — not to say he was right or wrong — and the most shocking thing to the franchise. But our culture is the same. You have your up years and your down years, but what can’t change is the way you do things.”That wasn’t necessarily the whole truth. After the Heat lost to San Antonio in the 2014 N.B.A. finals, Riley, undoubtedly referring to James’s looming free agency, told reporters: “You’ve got to stay together if you’ve got the guts. And you don’t find the first door to run out of.”James still exited, stage left. An old Riley tactic — challenging players’ manhood — fell on deaf, new-age ears. Most spiels grow old. And Riley, 69 at the time, is now a more muted 78, a stealth operator, Godfather Riley more than Gordon Gekko Riley. Yet he remains indisputably relevant, still resplendent, while watching and waiting for the auspicious occasion that will merit his last hurrah. More

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      Knicks vs. Heat: Brawls, Nail-Biters and a Clinging Coach

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      It was a basketball rivalry born not of a thrilling comeback or a hard-fought series, but of a fight. And then it became even fiercer — after yet another fight.It took two upsets in these N.B.A. playoffs — the fifth-seeded Knicks over the fourth-seeded Cleveland Cavaliers and the eighth-seeded Miami Heat over the top-seeded Milwaukee Bucks — to get here. But the Knicks-Heat rivalry that burned through the late 1990s has unexpectedly been renewed in an Eastern Conference semifinal series that begins Sunday afternoon.The personnel of the teams is different from a quarter-century ago, but many of their fans are not, and their long memories will naturally be going back to the days of Pat Riley, Charles Oakley, Patrick Ewing and Tim Hardaway. And more than a few will have vivid images in their minds of a 5-foot-9 coach clinging to the leg of a 6-foot-10 player.1997: The Fracas That Started It AllKnicks forward Charles Oakley, left, was ejected from Game 5 of the 1997 Eastern Conference semifinals after bumping Heat center Alonzo Mourning. A melee followed moments later.Rhona Wise/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe elements were there. Riley, who had led the Knicks for three seasons, had become the coach of the Heat, and there was bad blood over the move. The Heat eventually had to send the Knicks a first-round pick after they were found to have tampered with Riley while he was still under contract.The Eastern Conference semifinals did not cool things off. The Knicks led, three games to one, but the Heat were on their way to a win in Miami when, with two minutes left, things broke down.It started when Charles Oakley of the Knicks bumped Alonzo Mourning of the Heat and was ejected. On the next play, Charlie Ward of the Knicks squatted and bumped into P.J. Brown at knee level. Brown then picked up the 6-foot Ward and threw him out of bounds. This started a melee with plenty of grabbing and at least one obscene gesture. Riley ended up in a screaming match with Dontae’ Jones of the Knicks, who wasn’t even dressed for the game, and Jones exchanged words with some Miami fans.The most crucial factor was that most of the Knicks team left the bench, and although they did not become deeply involved in the tumult, this violated a sacrosanct N.B.A. rule designed to limit combat to those already on the court. Five Knicks were suspended — Ward, Patrick Ewing, Allan Houston, John Starks and Larry Johnson — and only one Heat player, Brown. It was a record for heavy postseason suspensions.Because so many Knicks had been suspended, the penalties were staggered: Three Knicks were to miss Game 6 and two Game 7. Short-handed, the Knicks lost both games, blowing their 3-1 lead and the series. Miami lost in the next round to the Chicago Bulls.1998: ‘That’s Cold. That’s Cold.’After a fight broke out in the waning seconds of Game 4 of a 1998 first-round series, Knicks Coach Jeff Van Gundy grabbed Alonzo Mourning’s leg while sprawled on the court.G. Paul Burnett/The New York TimesEveryone wanted a rematch, and they got it in the first round, because the Knicks — hampered because Ewing had played only 26 games that season as a result of a broken wrist — were the seventh seed. The New York Times’s headline on its preview of the series was “Gentlemen, Sharpen Your Elbows.”With a second to go in Game 4 at Madison Square Garden, and the Knicks about to even the series at two games apiece, Mourning and Johnson tangled beneath the basket. Punches were thrown, and it all ended with Coach Jeff Van Gundy of the Knicks on the court, hanging on to Mourning’s leg.“I am not an idiot,” Van Gundy said. “I wasn’t attacking nobody. I was trying to get between the two guys so there weren’t any punches thrown.”“I’ve never been one to let a guy swing at me,” Johnson said, “especially when it’s a punk like that. There’s 1.4 left. That’s cold. That’s cold.” Both combatants were suspended for the finale of the five-game series.This time, though, the Knicks seemed to benefit and won Game 5, 98-81, and the series in Miami. They were eliminated in the next round by the Pacers.1999: A Giant-KillingKnicks guard Allan Houston shooting the winning basket late in Game 5 in a first-round series against the Heat in 1999.Wilfredo Lee/Associated PressRound 3 came in a strike year when the regular season had been only 50 games. The shortened season threw up some strange results, and the Knicks only barely sneaked into the playoffs as the eighth seed. That gave them another first-round matchup against the Heat, who were tied for the conference’s best record.The teams traded wins, setting up a decisive Game 5 in Miami. For once, the most memorable moment of the series involved basketball rather than fisticuffs.Trailing by 1, the Knicks inbounded the ball with 4.5 seconds left. Allan Houston got off a jumper from the free-throw line. It bounced off the front of the rim, bounced off the backboard — and went in.“It seemed like it hung for two minutes, not two seconds,” Houston said. “It’s the biggest shot ever for me.”“If we didn’t get the bounce, we’d be talking about something totally different right now,” he added.The Knicks became the second eighth seed to beat a No. 1, a feat matched a few times since, including this season, by the Heat. They went on to make the finals in the topsy-turvy season and lost to the San Antonio Spurs.2000: A Whisker of a DifferenceLatrell Sprewell after securing a crucial rebound, and the Knicks’ victory, in the 2000 Eastern Conference semifinals.Nathaniel S. Butler/NBAE, via Getty ImagesFor the fourth time in four years, there was a Knicks-Heat series, and for the fourth time it went the distance. In terms of pure basketball enjoyment, this conference semifinal probably ranked first of the four matchups. The teams alternated wins for the first six games, which were decided by margins of 4, 6, 1 (in overtime), 8, 6 and 2 points.Game 7 was in Miami, and it was fought hard. With 12 seconds left, the Heat, trailing by 1, inbounded the ball. But Ewing and Johnson prevented Mourning from getting the ball, and Jamal Mashburn declined to shoot. That left the potential Heat game-winner to an unlikely marksman: Clarence Weatherspoon, who missed his jumper.Latrell Sprewell got the rebound for the Knicks but was ruled to have stepped out of bounds with two seconds left. But the referee Dick Bavetta overruled the call, and the Knicks won the game and the series, their third straight over the Heat.Angry Heat fans pelted the court with debris. “That’s why they call him Knick Bavetta,” Hardaway said. “It’s not right.”The Knicks lost in the conference finals to the Indiana Pacers.The Last Two DecadesLeBron James battling Carmelo Anthony for a rebound during a 2012 playoff series.Barton Silverman/The New York TimesRivalries like Knicks-Heat don’t last forever, at least at that level of white-hot intensity.After four consecutive playoff meetings, they have met only once in the intervening years, in 2012. The drama was not the same, and the Heat, with LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh, won in five.But now the rivalry is back. The eighth-seeded Heat shocked the Bucks in five games, helped when Giannis Antetokounmpo left Game 1 early and missed Games 2 and 3. The series was capped by a 16-point fourth-quarter rally and an overtime win in Game 5, with Jimmy Butler scoring 42 points.The Knicks beat the Cavs in five, as well, their first playoff series win in a decade. Their defense held Cleveland to 94.2 points a game, and Jalen Brunson averaged 24 points.Butler, Brunson and their teammates will decide the series, not Oakley or Mourning. And maybe it will be cleanly played and a showcase for outstanding fundamentals.But forgive some fans for secretly rooting to see Knicks Coach Tom Thibodeau hanging from Bam Adebayo’s legs. More

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      How Pat Riley Quit on the Knicks

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      In a book excerpt, a writer details the Knicks’ infighting and the tense contract negotiations that led Coach Pat Riley to leave for the Miami Heat in 1995.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’Dave Checketts, left, the former president of Madison Square Garden, and former Knicks General Manager Ernie Grunfeld, right, discuss the resignation of Pat Riley on June 15, 1995.Marty Lederhandler/Associated PressDuring 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’In “Blood in the Garden,” Chris Herring reported that Riley wanted an ownership stake in the Knicks as part of a contract extension but was denied.Ron Frehm/Associated PressIt 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.The Indiana Pacers pile on Reggie Miller after they defeated the Knicks in Game 7 of the 1995 Eastern Conference semifinals.Nathaniel S. Butler/NBAE via Getty Images“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’Riley, left, signed his new contract to be head coach and president of the Miami Heat on Sept. 2, 1995, while Micky Arison looked on.Andy Newman/Associated PressButera 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’Riley had one year left on his contract with the Knicks when he left for the Heat.Robert Sullivan/AFP via Getty ImagesAs 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. More

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      Anthony Carter's Agent Cost Him $3 Million. The Agent Paid Him Back.

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyAn Agent’s Mistake Cost an N.B.A. Player $3 Million. He Paid Him Back.All Bill Duffy had to do was inform the Miami Heat that Anthony Carter planned to return. Two decades after failing to do that, Duffy has made his client whole.Anthony Carter was an unassuming reserve for the Miami Heat. He became famous when his agent made a simple error that cost him more than $3 million.Credit…Joe Murphy/NBAE, via Getty ImagesDec. 14, 2020, 9:00 a.m. ETAnthony Carter is one of the most consequential figures in Miami Heat history. And it was all because of a mistake.Sure, any Knicks fan will tell you that Carter came out of nowhere to beat their team at the buzzer in Game 3 of the 2000 Eastern Conference semifinals. But Carter was never a star. Far from it: He spent the first four seasons of his 13-year N.B.A. career as a reserve for the Heat, averaging between 4.1 and 6.3 points a game.And as great as the Knicks shot was, it was something that happened years afterward that forever enshrined Carter in Heat lore.After the 2002-03 season, Carter, then 27, was planning to exercise a $4.1 million player option to remain in Miami. Picking up the option was a no-brainer. Carter was coming off a disappointing season in which he averaged 4.1 points on .356 shooting in 49 games. For a player with that stat line, $4.1 million was a fortune.Except Carter’s agent, Bill Duffy, failed to notify the Heat by the June 30 deadline that Carter was coming back. Instead of locking in another season in Miami, Carter accidentally became a free agent.The mistake cost him at least $3 million. Carter had to settle for a minimum contract with the San Antonio Spurs — roughly $750,000 — the next season, rather than the $4.1 million he would have locked in by exercising his option.As criticism rained down on Duffy, the agent offered to make it right. He would pay Carter $3 million out of his own pocket — through an agreed-upon payment schedule — to make up for the mistake, essentially the difference between his Spurs contract and the Heat salary he had forfeited. It was an unusual and virtually unprecedented move.This year marked the last of those payments, with Carter confirming in an interview this week that Duffy made good on his promise.That was hardly a surprise for Carter, who said he never considered firing Duffy in the wake of the incident.Credit…Ron Turenne/NBAE, via Getty Images‘I wasn’t even mad, to tell you the truth. I didn’t think anything of it until lawyers and stuff called. I didn’t jump to any conclusions.’ Anthony Carter, who coached in the N.B.A.’s development league before joining the Heat as an assistant, on his relationship with his agent.“I wasn’t even mad, to tell you the truth,” said Carter, who is now back with the Heat as an assistant coach. “I didn’t think anything of it until lawyers and stuff called. I didn’t jump to any conclusions. I didn’t say, ‘What happened?’ Because I knew what type of person he was. Things happen.”It was a blunder that had cascading effects.The most noteworthy ripple was that it gave Pat Riley, the Heat’s president, an unexpected amount of cap space that summer, which he used to sign Lamar Odom as a free agent. One year later, in 2004, Odom was the centerpiece of a trade with the Los Angeles Lakers for Shaquille O’Neal.Two years after acquiring O’Neal, Miami won its first N.B.A. championship. It was Duffy’s clerical error that, at least in part, allowed the championship to happen. That turned Carter’s contract situation with the Heat into one of the all-time “What Ifs?” in league history.“I should’ve got one of them rings, too,” Carter, 45, joked.Riley declined to comment for this article.While Carter’s loyalty to Duffy may seem baffling to some, it was a result of Duffy’s previous faith in Carter.Carter’s making it to the N.B.A. at all was a long shot. He dropped out of Alonzo A. Crim High School in Atlanta after his freshman year. He spent the next three years traveling around the city and playing basketball games for money to make a living. At one of those games in 1994, an opponent offered to send a tape highlighting Carter’s game to the coach at Saddleback College, a junior college in California. With some help of friends and family, Carter got his G.E.D. and headed west. Two years later, he transferred to the University of Hawaii, a Division I program.In 1998, months after he injured his left shoulder before his senior year at Hawaii, Carter damaged it more seriously on the first day of a camp ahead of the N.B.A. draft. The injury required surgery and other agents stopped pursuing him, assuming that his N.B.A. hopes were dead. All of them, that is, except for Duffy, who stuck with Carter and arranged for him to sign with the Heat after he went undrafted. He spent four years with the team.Duffy’s mistake could have been as damaging to his future as it was to Carter’s. But in promising to pay back Carter, his loyalty instead became a selling point for his services.“When this happened, I was hearing from a lot of people because I took responsibility,” Duffy said. “I took ownership of it and took care of it and he was taken care of.“I’ve had Wall Street people call me and say: ‘Man, that happens all the time. Everybody tries to hide from it. They try to pass the buck. You stood up for it. You took care of it.’ I actually gained a lot of respect from people.”Credit…Jeff Chiu/Associated Press‘When this happened, I was hearing from a lot of people because I took responsibility. I took ownership of it and took care of it.’Bill Duffy, an agent whose client list now includes Luka Doncic and Rajon Rondo.At the time, it took days for the news of the filing error to reach Carter. Duffy, who declined to go into the specifics of how the oversight occurred, first learned about from the team. Llew Haden, Carter’s close friend and financial adviser, said he heard about it on July 4, when a reporter called looking for a comment.“I know my emotion wasn’t anger,” Haden said. “First, I was just astounded. ‘How in the hell could something like this happen?’ And then it was, ‘What are we going to do next?’”N.B.A. agents are known to be hypercompetitive. Yet both Carter and Haden said they did not receive any calls from Duffy’s competitors. Instead, Haden theorized, they may have been celebrating a rival’s apparent professional downfall.“I think most of them were just dancing up and down in the halls,” Haden said. “They were going to be able to get clients who would be tempted to go with them.”In fact, from the day they received the news, the only calls that Carter and Haden received were from lawyers offering to represent Carter pro bono to sue Duffy — offers they never seriously considered.Duffy flew to Atlanta that week to meet with Carter and Haden and work out their financial arrangement: a series of payments — a sort of annuity lasting until 2020 — that would make Carter whole.“He was there for me from Day 1,” Carter said. “I just knew I was going to stick with him regardless, and to this day, we have a close friendship.”Duffy’s business survived the mistake, too. Today, he has a stable roster of N.B.A. clients, including Luka Doncic, Rajon Rondo and Goran Dragic.After leaving the Heat, Carter stayed in the league for nine more seasons. He developed a reputation as a hard worker and was a key player on the 2008-2009 Denver Nuggets, who went to the Western Conference finals. According to Basketball Reference, Carter’s N.B.A. earnings are estimated at $17 million, less than what many current players now collect in a single season. The $3 million in restitution from Duffy represents a significant portion of his career earnings.Carter and Duffy have maintained an enduring relationship. Duffy has given Carter guidance on his children, including his son Devin, who is a high school basketball player currently committed to the University of South Carolina. Duffy also still looks over Carter’s contracts.Carter says he has never brought up the filing error with Duffy, not even to joke about it. Nor has he joked about it with Riley since returning to the organization as a coach in 2016. But he says he is at peace with how things worked out.“I got my name in the history books in two different ways,” Carter said, referring to his buzzer-beater and the contract-that-wasn’t. “I wouldn’t change anything.”Carter is known for two things: the clerical error that cost him more than $3 million, and this buzzer-beater against the Knicks in 2000.Credit…Nathaniel S. Butler/NBAE via Getty ImagesAdvertisementContinue reading the main story More