« It might be irreversible right now because everybody is locked into guarantees and they’re all comfortable and they can get in their car and they can go home and put their head down on the pillow and not give a damn. »
As the chief grand poobah of the hideous Miami Heat this season, Pat Riley has lost a lot of games, his patience and, well, his mind. Now, he could lose serious money.
South Florida fans yesterday expressed their intentions to collect from Riley after his bizarre post-game vow Wednesday that he’d personally “write a cheque to each season-ticket holder” because of his team’s performance in a 108-83 loss to the Toronto Raptors.
Riley said: “I should write the cheque … because I can’t get (his players) to play hard.”
Subscribers didn’t seem shy yesterday about taking Riley up on his offer.
“I want Riley’s money as compensation for the pain and suffering I’ve endured as a season-ticket holder,” a caller named Jim said on radio station WQAM in Miami yesterday. “Riley had better get ready to open up his wallet. You make a statement like that, and you’d better back it up.”
If every Heat subscriber received a full refund for Wednesday’s game, it’d cost Riley about $1 million US
•Riley expressed extraordinary disdain for his players after the Wednesday blowout, threatening to “ferret out the guys who don’t really care” and promising to replace them with no-names.
“It might be irreversible right now because everybody is locked into guarantees and they’re all comfortable and they can get in their car and they can go home and put their head down on the pillow and not give a damn,” Riley said. “But there will be a day of reckoning. They will be somewhere else and there will be guys in here who care again.”
•Not to belabour the point, but I’ll repeat the view I expressed in this space yesterday — that a quarterback controversy is inevitable with the Toronto Argonauts.
Truth is, Kerry Joseph isn’t all that great. He’s almost 35, was a defensive halfback in the NFL, was injury-free last season only for the first time in his career, played in an offensive scheme run by ex-Saskatchewan head coach Kent Austin (fired by the Argos only the year before because they abhored his offence — the exact, same one in which Joseph excelled last season) and wasn’t even very effective in the Roughriders’ Grey Cup win last November.
And, even though Michael Bishop was saying all the right things at the Argos’ news conference yesterday, his facial expressions told us how he really feels. He thinks he’s better than Joseph. And he might just be.
Regardless, if both QBs stay healthy in 2008, the Argos are asking for trouble.
•And, for hockey stuff, please visit www.metronews.cafor my latest NHL Report.
Marty York
