Pat Riley flashed back to his own career-elevating ascension when a furor erupted recently over Magic Johnson’s so-called credentials to run the Lakers. A sports-talk radio debate, triggered by a national host based in Riley’s Miami market, quickly devolved into a racially tinged spitting contest within the same media company.

Submitting as evidence his own appointment to the Lakers’ coaching job in 1981, or half a lifetime ago, Riley said Magic’s skin color wasn’t the point. At least not the main one.

“Welcome to the new seat, whichever seat you just got to sit down in, and to an immediate reaction on both sides of the fence,” he told The Vertical. “With me, it wasn’t as public. There was no internet for it to get picked up on but I heard it within the coaching profession: ‘He didn’t coach in high school, didn’t coach in college, wasn’t prepared. How could he get the most prestigious job in the NBA?’ ”

Riley allowed the implicit recognition of the four Showtime championships that followed to marinate for a moment before adding, in a firmer tone: “To adamantly say Earvin is not qualified is nonsense. Like Jerry West, he’s a prodigal son of the Lakers.”

Also left unsaid, but understood, was that West, now deified as the most visionary of living league executives, was handed the Lakers’ coaching job with a say in personnel matters in 1976 by then-owner Jack Kent Cooke, based largely on what he had done as a player, as Mr. Clutch.

Pat Riley has been with the Heat since 1995. (AP) More

How clutch? On the court, West delivered one title to the Lakers, compared to Magic’s five.

“So why shouldn’t Earvin get an opportunity?” Riley said.

Riley, 71, is 27 years removed from his image-shaping Lakers’ days, 22 years now at the executive helm of the Heat, whom he also coached until a decade ago, winning one title on the bench and directing two more from the front office during the four-year rental of LeBron James.

He is no impartial observer on Magic, but who in the sport can claim greater insight to the man he partnered with for nine years, or most of Magic’s career?

“The smartest player I ever coached,” Riley said.

It is significant to note that he is not in the habit of saying much of anything during the regular season, letting his coach, Erik Spoelstra, serve as Miami’s front man. So perhaps it was the old blue-collar brawler from Schenectady, N.Y., Riley’s inner Houdini breaking free of a self-imposed silence, when he stood up for Magic in a lengthy interview with The Vertical that found him in a reflective and even self-deprecatory mood.

To the assertion that Magic had revealed himself to be an analytic lightweight during his time as a network talkie, Riley was ruefully mindful of his one-year run as an NBC commentator between coaching jobs in Los Angeles and New York.

“I hated it, just hated it,” he said. “I could not be insightful in a 10-second sound bite. I couldn’t be critical. I’m glad the people in New York didn’t base their evaluation of me on that. And as far as what I do today, I don’t know what that means.”

Magic was bland at broadcasting, that’s for sure, and often seemed unprepared. But disengagement from the game is a long way from not knowing it, or being qualified to, as Riley put it, “rolling up your sleeves and getting to work.”

If Magic wasn’t enlightening viewers on television, or foreshadowing West’s legacy with a string of tweets that fell far short of player-evaluative genius, it is also indisputable that he was otherwise busy elevating himself into the pantheon of players-turned-private-sector-producers.

In terms of skillfully running an organization, Riley said, what’s the difference?

“Earvin is a guy who has been a prolific businessman, with his cinemas, Starbucks and other things,” he said. “He’s gone into companies and changed management, changed the culture. He’s charismatic, gets up in front of people and puts an immediate face on an organization.”

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