Pat Riley, Shaquille O'Neal and the matter of legitimacy

This Friday, Shaquille O'Neal will be inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. Earlier this week, Pat Riley reminisced about the Big Diesel's time with the Miami Heat and told Ira Winderman of the South Florida Sun Sentinel, "Shaq's acquisition was bigger than any acquisition we've ever made, including the Big Three."

Riley went on to say in the same interview that trading for Shaq gave the Heat some "real legitimacy." 

It's a simple statement, and perhaps Riley is just paying homage to Shaq in a week where his career accomplishments are being celebrated. But this is also the Pat Riley, master of coded messages in the media who telegraphed a message to LeBron James after the Heat lost to the Spurs in 2015 Finals, saying: "This stuff is hard, and you've got to stay together, if you've got the guts. And you don't find the first door and run out of it…" — before LeBron indeed chose to leave Miami to go home to Cleveland. 

The following year, Riley said free agency would be easier to approach now that there were "no more smiling faces with hidden agendas," sending another not-very-indirect shot toward LeBron, who responded with his own subtle jab after coming back from 3-1 to defeat the Warriors in this year's NBA Finals. LeBron revealed his secret motivation to be someone whom he trusted and built relationships with in Miami telling him going back to Cleveland would be the biggest mistake of his career. I'm going to venture an educated guess and say that person isn't the Heat's marketing intern or assistant video coordinator. 

So, given the back-and-forth, we certainly can't put it past Riley to be simply using the opportunity to trade another shot toward LeBron, to diminish his impact while in Miami, and send a message that the franchise can and will move on in his absence. Motivations aside, Riley's statement does beg the question: Did trading for Shaq really legitimize the Heat franchise?

When Riley joined the Heat in 1996, he was able to turn a franchise that up to that point had made two playoff appearances, losing in the first round each time, into a perennial contender in the Eastern Conference. He did this by assembling a roster around two stars: Alonzo Mourning and Tim Hardaway. The Heat joined the league in 1988. The franchise then watched the geographical rival Orlando Magic join the year after and (coincidentally, thanks to Shaq) make the NBA Finals in the sixth year of existence. 

After Riley landed in Miami, the Heat had 50-plus wins in three out of the next four seasons, with the high point being a 61-win season in 1997 when Miami lost to the Chicago Bulls in the Eastern Conference Finals. Even though the Heat didn't win a championship during the Zo-Hardaway era, you could argue the franchise was legitimized by Riley's arrival. 

On the matter of legitimacy, though, it's worthwhile to remember that despite his reputation, Riley went almost two decades without a championship. From 1988 to 2006, Riley was unable to add to his rings collection. It was after Shaq's arrival that the Heat once again turned into a championship contender and won the franchise's first title in 2006. So you can see why Riley might point to trading Caron Butler, Lamar Odom, Brian Grant and a first-round pick for Shaq as a turning point for the franchise. 

But even that argument is hard to support when you take a closer look at the 2006 title team, which was spearheaded by Dwyane Wade, who led the team in scoring, averaging 27.2 points per game during the regular season. Shaq, at 33, averaged 20.0 points and 9.6 rebounds, taking 13.6 shots per game compared to Wade's 18.8. In the six-game series against the Mavericks in the Finals, Wade had his career-defining series (and as many point out, a parade to the free throw line) averaging 34.7/7.8/3.8 while Shaq contributed 13.6 points and 10.2 rebounds — and was third on the team in scoring in the Finals behind Wade and Antoine Walker. 

The Shaq era in Miami, which spanned parts of four seasons, helped the Heat reach the pinnacle, but it's hard to extract any long-lasting impact for the franchise from it. In Shaq's first season, the Heat came within a game of the Finals, losing to the Pistons in seven games. The team won a championship the following year and subsequently — thanks to an aging roster around Wade, including Shaq's inevitable decline — had one of the worst seasons for a defending champion ever, becoming the first team since 1957 to win a title and then get swept in the first round the following year.

In Shaq's fourth year, the Heat was no longer even a playoff contender, and he was sent to Phoenix in a midseason trade. 

If you want to talk about championships and overall impact, it's hard to look at the four years of the Big Three and walk away feeling as though the Shaq years left a bigger mark. LeBron, Wade and Chris Bosh made four straight Finals together and won two more championships for the franchise.

You also can't attribute Shaq's presence in Miami as the reason why it helped legitimize the Heat to be able to land LeBron in the summer of 2010. The credit has to go to Riley himself for keeping the team financially flexible under the cap, and to the brotherhood that exists between LeBron and Wade, their willingness to take less money to be on the same team and Cleveland's inability to build a strong enough roster around LeBron before he hit the market. 

So, add it all up, and it becomes increasingly difficult to accept Riley's statement regarding Shaq. In fact, it becomes clear that it not only does a disservice to Riley's roster-building in his two decades in Miami, but it neglects the fact that if you were to revisit the franchise's entire history, it's hard not to see it was Wade— the former face of the franchise who is in Chicago now — who led them to the first title and was a significant player during the Big Three's four-year run. He was the biggest influence in luring LeBron to Miami as well. The threads of Wade's influence connect several eras of the Heat more so than the acquisition of Shaq. 

Of course, Riley can choose to see things his way, and the acquisition of Shaq was the most significant move that summer, given that it signaled the end of the Shaq-Kobe era in Los Angeles. But if we're really going to measure the legitimacy of the Heat, we'll have to start with Wade and not do a disservice to Riley himself either.

Or maybe Riley is sitting in his office, smoking a cigar, laughing at the statement he made, satisfied with the fact he's made it clear to the Big Three and specifically LeBron that his impact on the franchise is not as valued as the Big Fella.