With Mourning, It's a New Day

Any team that plays for Riley is made constantly aware of the stakes, of the rewards and consequences. But does it mean more to Mourning, given all he's been through since 2000?

"It does," he said. "And it's hard to explain to these guys because the only way they would understand it is to walk in my shoes. And that's virtually impossible. I do know this: Nothing is promised to you. Your time on the court is not promised to you even though you think it might be. These young guys coming into the league don't understand that as soon as they step on the floor a clock starts. It starts ticking. And none of us knows when it's going to stop. Ask Bobby Hurley. Ask [Jay] Williams. Ask those guys. You don't know when your career is going to end. So you have to approach situations like this as, 'Man, this could be my last opportunity . . . to play for something special.' So, that's my mentality."

Hurley, 34, never got the chance to play for something special after a horrific automobile accident during his rookie season, and last played in the NBA in 1997-98. Meantime, Williams -- like Hurley, a former Duke all-American -- is still trying to recover and catch on after a motorcycle accident following his rookie season.

Mourning is happy, and says so, that something as important to him as this playoff stretch is in Riley's hands. He came to Miami, largely, because of Riley. Both have lived for challenges, lived for the grueling practices.

And now each has a second chance at trying to win a championship -- an unforeseen chance, really.

"I know what he brings to the table from a knowledge standpoint," Mourning said. "He's seen so many games, situations, what have you. The decisions he makes during games, the adjustments he makes after games are born of what he's seen before. You combine that with the fact that we've got a team full of veteran players, some of whom have been in NBA Finals and conference finals, and that should mean a pretty high success rate. We've fallen into our roles. If we bring an effort each and every game, it's going to be hard to beat us. Very hard."

Asked what's different about Riley, Mourning can identify one primary thing: The killer practices Riley used to conduct late in the season and during the playoffs are over.

"On a day like today," he said, "we'd have gone extremely hard in the past. I think he has admitted to [the media] and he's admitted to us that he has had to make an adjustment in that part of the game, of his approach to it was unnecessary. Looking back, he [says] he can honestly say that it might have been a detriment. And I totally agree. I was playing 40-some minutes a game. So, I think his approach from a practice standpoint is very different."

Riley wouldn't have admitted that in the early years and Mourning probably wouldn't have wanted him to. Of this new role, the coach said of Mourning: "His role is that he's a leader. He's backing up Shaq, sparing him minutes. So Zo's playing segmented minutes and probably three minutes or four minutes at the most. He's capable of making plays for us, but he's been a leader, a great leader for us and a great backup center right now for Shaq."