42 Pat Riley

Pat Riley was born Patrick James Riley on March 20, 1945, in Rome, New York, and grew up in Schenectady. The son of longtime minor-league baseball player and manager Leon “Lee” Riley, he became a three-sport standout at Linton High School. Riley earned All-America recognition in both basketball and football, scored exactly 1,000 points during his three-year basketball career and averaged 29.5 points as a senior. Although Bear Bryant recruited him to play football at Alabama, Riley chose basketball and Adolph Rupp’s Kentucky program, which he had admired since childhood.

After averaging 20.8 points and a team-leading 14.7 rebounds for Kentucky’s freshman team, Riley became a three-year varsity starter. The powerful 6-foot-4 forward was at his best as a junior in 1965–66, when he earned SEC Player of the Year, first-team All-SEC and third-team All-America honors. He led the famed “Rupp’s Runts” to a 27–2 record, the SEC championship and the 1966 NCAA title game against Texas Western. Riley repeated as a first-team All-SEC selection as a senior, and Kentucky later retired his No. 42 jersey.

One of Riley’s defining performances came in the 1966 NCAA Mideast Regional final against Michigan. He scored 29 points as top-ranked Kentucky defeated the Wolverines 84–77, sending the Wildcats to their first Final Four since 1958. Riley was named the regional’s most outstanding player and earned a place on the All-NCAA Tournament Team, cementing his legacy as the emotional and physical force behind one of Kentucky basketball’s most celebrated teams.

The San Diego Rockets selected Riley with the seventh overall pick in the 1967 NBA Draft. He played nine NBA seasons and won a championship with the Los Angeles Lakers in 1972 before building an even greater legacy on the sideline. Riley coached the “Showtime” Lakers to four championships, guided the New York Knicks to the 1994 NBA Finals and won another title as head coach of the Miami Heat in 2006. He later added championships as a Miami executive in 2012 and 2013.

Inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2008, Riley became one of the most influential coaches and executives in NBA history. His journey from Rupp’s Runts to the forefront of professional basketball made him one of the most accomplished former Wildcats in any sport.