Hall-of-Famer Tim Hardaway speaks about his relationship with Miami Heat head coach Pat Riley in an excerpt from his upcoming book.
Many an NBA contender was burned by the efforts of Tim Hardaway, who always knew when and how to raise the heat.
Hardaway, 59, is set to look back on his Hall-of-Fame career in the upcoming book
“IN YO FACE!”
— Ballislife.com (@Ballislife) September 1, 2024
HBD to the Killer Crossover King Tim Hardaway
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“A master trash talker and one of the best ball handlers, Hardaway shares what it was like playing basketball in the nineties against some of the greatest to ever play the game, including future Hall of Famers Michael Jordan, Shaquille O’Neal, Patrick Ewing, and Reggie Miller,” the Amazon description reads. “Never shy to speak his mind, ‘Tim Bug’ pulls back the curtain on the blood, sweat, and tears that went into becoming one of the most feared guards in the game and a future Hall of Famer.”
View an excerpt shared exclusively with Ballislife.com from Hardaway and Uitti’s book below. The segment comes from the ninth chapter entitled “Pat Riley” …
I WAS small growing up, so my cousins nicknamed me “Tim Bug” because they said I scooted around the house like a little bug. I’d run through people’s legs and was almost too small to tackle when we played football. On the basketball court, I could dribble everywhere because I was so low to the ground.
In the NBA, though, my Miami Heat teammates started calling me “Bigs” as a nickname. At first it was because I was a bit overweight. Like I said, that’s what happens when you don’t play a lot for a while, which was the case due to my last year on the Warriors. In Miami, Voshon Lenard called me Bigs first, because I was a little bit chunky.
But as my career went on there, I started to hit big shot after big shot. When that happened, I flipped the name Bigs and it came to mean all the big buckets I got. Reporters would ask, “Oh, they call you Bigs for all those buzzer-beaters?” I’d smile and nod, “Yup!” But even as I slimmed down, I was still burly. I was strong and played that way. It’s how I was raised in Chicago: no crying, no backing down. Like my dad said, there are no positions on the court. If you want to play down low, play down low—but you have to be ready for it.
In grammar school, I learned how to post up, drop-step. I did the George Mikan layup drill repeatedly. The game can be dirty, so I made sure to always be ready for anything. Some guys might be 6-foot-2, but they make a seven-footer look tiny. That’s what confidence—or lack thereof—can do for you.
With a new contract and the starting job, I knew this was my redemption year. My first full year with the Miami Heat was my best in the NBA. Pat brought in a slew of great talent, too, including Dan Majerle, P. J. Brown, and center Isaac Austin (who won the Most Improved Player that season). Pat also tried to sign Juwan Howard but the league vetoed that move for esoteric salary cap reasons and he later signed with Washington to be with his friend Chris Webber.
Majerle was the consummate pro, a great teammate, and an excellent shooter and defender. He made big shots, but was also dealing with back issues at the time. P. J. was our best low-post defender. We had a formidable roster for the 1996–97 season, and it was bolstered midway through when Pat traded Kurt Thomas for the 20-point scorer Jamal Mashburn from the Mavericks via the University of Kentucky. We had a good crew, but we just couldn’t stay healthy the whole way through. Dan, Zo, and Mash dealt with injuries, but thankfully we were all healthy around playoff time. The NBA season is long, and durability is an important part. We were winning and having fun doing so. But I wasn’t looking at the season through the lens of number of wins. We wanted to win the whole thing. Yes, victories are important for seeding, but I had the long view in mind.
Some might ask how I developed chemistry with my team. I’m one of those guys who prepares ahead of the season. As a point guard, I study my roster. I know where each guy likes to rock, when they like to catch it. Point guards have to know their personnel. The thing I focused on ahead of the season was conditioning. Pat’s famous five 17s. That’s when you run from sideline to sideline on the court 17 times faster than basically humanly possible. I’d heard how gruesome they were. With only a two-minute break in between. They were tough, but I got through them. I proved I was ready for the new year.
That season, I was able to play in 81 games and had my best overall year as a pro. I led the team in scoring, assists, and steals, I made First Team All-NBA, finishing fourth in NBA MVP voting. For Riley, the season was all about having something to prove. He assembled a group of guys he thought all had chips on their shoulders; players who he thought the league had all but written off. But that wasn’t my personal take on it. I just thought he put a good team together, and I was ready to come out and play. Do what we needed to do, what we’d done our entire careers. I knew we could win at a high level.
Riley, who often seemed like a General, never gave the team a speech about me getting the car keys like Don Nelson had when I was a second-year player in Golden State. It was just assumed that I was the lead dog. For a while, Pat never thought anyone could match his Basketball IQ, other than Magic [Johnson]. Thought that no one could have control of a team like him. But when he saw what I could do, that took him back to his old Showtime days. He knew he had a six-foot guard that could do what the 6-foot-9 Johnson could. I think it surprised him a little that I could go out there and command the team. But it created quick trust.
For Pat, who took over the Heat at 50 years old and became “The Godfather” of the team, Miami was his new home after years in Los Angeles and New York. (People ask me if he has mafia ties and I’ll just say he knows a few people.)
Pat liked to dabble in mind games. Sometimes that meant him talking about the contract I’d signed. “I know it’s not where you want it to be,” he said to me, “but I don’t want to hear you talking about it in public.” I told him I understood, but there were times during the year when the press came up to me saying Pat was talking about it to them. I had to approach Pat and say, “If you tell me not to talk about it, what makes you think I want to hear you talking about it?” I wasn’t upset, but I wanted to clear the air. I knew I’d signed a below-market deal, which I did for security, and that was that. I just wanted to keep moving forward.
But that was Pat. He would poke and push—everything to try and get the most out of his players. During the course of a season, he liked to sit us down and preach. On one occasion, after one of our practices—which were always closed to the outside world—he sat the whole team down. He was hooting and hollering about something and during his talk, he looked at me and said, “What do you think, Tim?” I looked up and replied, “Pat, you know what, man? I hear your message. I hear what you’re saying. But I’m just not with how you’re saying it. Your demeanor. Your face. You’re upset, you’re yelling. But I’m just not that type of person.”
Know that I’m the type of guy where I’ll do what the coach says, but I’m not going to get all revved up about it. I play. I know what a coach wants, and I’ll go out and do just that. I’ll give my team confidence and put us in a good position to win. But I’m not going to tear my teammates’ heads off doing it.
Ever since the eighth grade, I’ve been through coaches who would yell and scream. That doesn’t faze me. I listen to the message, not the shouting. Pat, though, didn’t like that response because he thought I was calling him out in front of everybody. He wanted me to say, “Yeah, yeah, sounds good, Pat!”
So after practice, he brought me up to his office. “Tim, I didn’t like that,” he said. “You didn’t like what?” I asked. He replied, “I didn’t like you saying that back to me because we’ve got young players and I need them to buy into the program.” After our meeting, I decided to use that conversation as a learning moment for us both.
Pat was a good coach and a good man, and there was no sense creating barriers or getting us off on the wrong foot as head coach and point guard. I said, “Pat, you know what Nellie used to do? When you’re going to ask me something, why don’t you tell me beforehand? Tell me you’re going to come to me during practice with such-and-such and that you need me to agree on it. And that will be that. When I don’t know what you’re going to say and you ask me for my opinion, I’m going to speak honestly about it. But I didn’t know you were going to point to me, so I’m sorry for how I responded.”
I added, “Next time you’re going to do that, just let me know first. Then I’ll go with it.” (Fun fact: Nellie actually replaced Pat in New York for 59 games when Riley had left.) Personally, I didn’t mind getting yelled at. If it has to be my day to take it, so be it. But if anyone asks me for my opinion, I’m going to give it honestly unless I know we need to be on the same page ahead of time. That day, we both learned something about each other, which benefited us moving forward.
Geoff Magliocchetti is on X @GeoffJMags
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