Gary Payton is one of the greatest point guards in NBA history, but for much of his career, the NBA championship kept eluding him. He would finally get his hands on the trophy in 2006 with the Miami Heat, but it certainly wasn’t all smooth sailing between him and head coach Pat Riley.
Shaquille O’Neal, who was also on that team, revealed that Payton wouldn’t listen to Riley and didn’t want to run his plays during games either.
“They got rid of me and Gary in Miami because Gary and I was the only ones that really didn’t listen to Pat,” O’Neal said. “So Pat would call the play and Gary would be like, ‘I’m not running that. I’m throwing the ball to Shaq.'”
O’Neal hilariously added that it would happen on every play and that Payton’s idea was that if Shaq gets doubled, then he’d just kick it out for someone else to score.
“Every play, Pat be doing the play and I can see Gary stood behind Pat with this face right here,” O’Neal added. “That face right there, ‘I ain’t doing that.’ D Wade be like, ‘Hey man, run the play.’ (Payton would reply), ‘I ain’t doing that.’ I’m throwing the ball to Shaq. He gonna get doubled, when he kick it out, hit the shot. Forget all of that.'”
Payton hilariously added he was 38 years old and didn’t have time to run plays. He kept it simple by dumping the ball to Shaq and the Heat had a fair bit of success with it.
Shaquille O’Neal Once Almost Got Into A Fist Fight With Pat Riley
While Riley is one of the greatest coaches ever, he wasn’t someone who was very easy to play under. There was tension between him and the players on the Los Angeles Lakers prior to his exit and it was the case with the Heat as well.
Shaq revealed that he once almost got to blows with Riley because he wanted to kick Jason Williams out of practice for being 10 seconds late during the 2007-08 season. O’Neal claims he tried to reason with his head coach that they had to stick together as a team, but Riley told him to get out as well if he had an issue with it.
O’Neal told Riley to make him get out of there and the two men nearly fought after that. Fortunately, it didn’t happen, but it might have accelerated Shaq’s departure from Miami as he was traded in 2008.
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