Dealing With Changed Men

The Heat's evolution is essentially pro basketball's this season, and Miami and the game are about to be rewarded.

Dwyane Wade's first finals. Dirk Nowitzki's coming-out bash. And, for better or worse, Mark Cuban is back on ABC in prime time. His Mavericks, we promise, will not be canceled earlier than "The Benefactor."

Of course, Steve Nash would have been a natural David to Shaq's Goliath. But without a 6-foot-9 body to guard the basket area, no one in basketball believed Phoenix could go more than five games against Miami. Heat-Mavericks is very likely going six, if not seven games.

Beyond Dallas, that series doesn't happen without headstrong icons taking stock of their ways.

Riley, 61, has not been to the finals since 1994 with New York. He last won a championship in 1988 with Magic and Kareem in Los Angeles. Personally, I think his decreasing stature in the game after he moved himself to the front office -- along with the growing lore of Phil Jackson and Larry Brown -- made him feel like Red Holzman in the 1980s or Dick Motta in the 1990s: old and out of place.

He had to know his whole militancy-in-sports shtick was not working, that more and more players were fraternizing before and after games, realizing sport was invented to bridge worlds rather than divide them. At some point, Riley stopped being Patton in Armani and started becoming the driven man who gets paid handsomely to motivate millionaires. Being a basketball coach -- and not a GQ advertisement -- seemed okay. He could still buy into his belief system, his win-or-die moral universe. But players like O'Neal didn't have to anymore as long as they performed.

O'Neal, after all, is 34 going on 12, a guy caught between the child off the court and the brute on it. He wants to win as many titles as possible his last five years -- and guest-star in "Scary Movie 8." If he has to diet and run more for Riley to make it reality, he will.

Payton still has the most menacing scowl in the game after Alonzo Mourning, but he doesn't sulk the way he used to. He's not the persecuted kid who can't get a call anymore. He's a backup point guard on a team four wins from helping him earn a championship ring, and he's okay with that.

On it goes with Miami. Jason Williams, the former Sacramento knucklehead, shelving his tricks so he could learn the trade of point guard. Antoine Walker, another one-time malcontent, taking a role instead of another bad shot. And, finally, Mourning, who drank Riley's Kool-Aid even in the lean times, the former Georgetown center within reach of an NBA championship that eluded Patrick Ewing and, so far, Dikembe Mutombo. After a kidney transplant in 2003 and two retirements, he also came back a changed ruffian.

"We just pushed each other, used each other to get there," O'Neal said. "I'm using what they got and they're using me. We're using each other to get one in Miami.

"We call it adding pages to our book."