- [Narrator] The Miami Heat won their first
NBA championship in 2006.
Miami's formula seems pretty straightforward.
Longtime Heat leader, Pat Riley,
drafted superstar, Dwyane Wade,
then traded for superstar, Shaquille O'Neal.
Then coached them to a title, simple.
But that short version of the story
leaves out one season,
one important character,
and the start of one long-lasting beef.
When Shaq arrived in Miami, his coach wasn't Pat Riley,
it was Stan Van Gundy.
The relationship between these two ended in a swift divorce,
but it stayed testy for a while longer.
Let's begin with Stan because he was there first.
In 1995, legendary head coach Pat Riley,
abruptly ditched the New York Knicks for the Miami Heat.
Miami gave him everything he wanted,
a huge salary plus control over the bench and front office.
Riley did not, however,
get to keep one of his favorite sidekicks.
The Knicks refused to let longtime assistant,
Jeff Van Gundy, follow Riley to Miami.
Undeterred, Riley found himself
another Van Gundy, literally.
Jeff's older, hairier brother Stan
had been climbing up the college coaching ranks for years
and finally got a big head coach gig at Wisconsin
the season prior.
Well, guess what, kid.
You're an NBA assistant coach now.
For the rest of the nineties, Riley tried, came close,
and ultimately failed to contend for a championship
with Stan by his side all the while.
Around the millennium, the Heat began to collapse,
and in 2003 they posted their worst record
of Riley's tenure.
Bad enough to land a top five pick in the '03 draft,
which, hey, not a bad year to be in the lottery.
With the fifth pick, Riley snagged Marquette guard,
Dwyane Wade, Miami's hopeful star of a new era.
But mere days before the '03-'04 season began,
Riley decided he didn't wanna coach this rebuild project
and suddenly resigned that half of his dual role.
Riley supposedly walked into Stan's office,
said, "You ready?"
and then gave the other Van Gundy brother
his first ever NBA head coaching job on the spot.
And it went great.
This team was fun as hell.
Not just this sensational rookie Wade,
but developing stars like Caron Butler and Lamar Odom,
wonderful vets like Eddie Jones and Brian Grant,
pure aesthetic joy in the form of Rafer Alston,
and, yes, Udonis Haslem was once a rookie.
The Heat were cool and likable,
and for the first time in a bit, pretty good.
They made the playoffs as a four seed
and won a nail biter first round against the Hornets.
For piloting this youth movement and defying expectations,
Van Gundy received strong consideration
for coach of the year.
Awesome! Great feelings all around.
And then, quite suddenly, those expectations exploded
in the summer of '04.
Riley, who was still team president, went ahead
and traded like half the people I just named for, yes.
Van Gundy's happy-go-lucky young roster
got sold out for the NBA's biggest superstar
in terms of personality, fame, salary, and you know, size.
No one was larger than Shaq.
Don't get me wrong, managing Shaquille O'Neal
is a fantastic problem to have.
But his sudden presence would represent a monumental shift
for anyone, let alone a coach entering his second season.
Shaq was believed to respect fame and resume above all else.
Everyone thought he played a role
in Phil Jackson taking the Lakers job from
the less-accomplished, Del Harris just a few years prior.
So, off the bat, people wondered if O'Neal
might tune out the inexperienced Van Gundy
and might respond better to Riley, who had won titles
with the Lakers during Shaq's childhood.
People even wondered if Riley would swoop back
onto the bench and reclaim his old second job.
All this, despite Shaq once writing he would never play
for Riley because of his famously grueling practices.
In the meantime, Shaq met his new actual coach
with typical good humor, if maybe not the best fitness.
He found Van Gundy to be a strong disciplinarian
and a demanding tactician.
Shaq sometimes got a bit frustrated
blending into a new system, but as far as I can tell
this was a fine enough professional partnership.
The major challenge for both men was Shaq's health.
O'Neal managed to stay available
for most of his first Heat season,
but played through a sore hamstring early on
and dragged a troublesome bruised thigh into the playoffs.
Still, he was a force when he played
and not even Miami's foremost threat
alongside the rapidly improving Wade.
Van Gundy coached both his stars
in the All-Star Game, topped the Eastern conference
with 59 wins, then guided Miami
through playoff sweeps of the Nets and Wizards,
even with Shaq severely hobbled.
In an Eastern conference final
against the defending champion Detroit Pistons,
Miami overcame a shaky game one
to pull ahead three games to two.
Stan Van Gundy had the Heat one win away
from the NBA Finals,
closer than Riley ever got them as coach.
Wade had to sit game six with a rib injury
which cost the Heat dearly,
but he returned for game seven at home.
That decisive contest looked good for Miami,
even with their nagging injuries,
Wade and Shaq led the Heat back from a halftime deficit.
Shaq played the final eight and a half minutes
of the fourth quarter and influenced the action in waves,
almost always featured in Miami's offense
as a screener or a finisher.
Each time the Heat seemed to slip, Shaq demanded the ball
and restored order.
Like this stretch around the three minute mark,
a post up, a drawn foul,
and, believe it or not, two clutch free throws.
Then, after Doug Collins noticed the big guy
calling his own number
- [NBA Announcer] Shaq says, bring me
the basketball right now.
- [Narrator] This gorgeous shake and bucket
against Ben Wallace to pull back ahead.
Still, you could tell Shaq wasn't quite himself
on a play like this lobbed from Wade, and you know
he wasn't gonna be perfect from the free throw line.
All this sets the scene
for the final 90 seconds of game seven.
Miami trailed once more.
This part is important for our BP purposes.
Possession number one, Shaq is out of the picture
on the weak side of the floor.
Wade takes a quick shot and bricks it badly.
Possession number two comes out of a timeout,
so Coach Van Gundy had a chance to draw something up
down three points.
Whatever it was, it does not find Shaq.
Wade faces a double team
and just dribbles straight into a tie-up.
Shaq gave the Heat life with a steal on the next play,
and Shaq scored Miami's only field goal
of the final two minutes, but it was too little, too late.
Blown fourth quarter lead, blown series lead,
no trip to the Finals for the East's number one seed.
And here it began.
After the game, reporters asked O'Neal
why he didn't dominate down the stretch,
and Big Diesel shifted that onus onto Van Gundy.
"I don't make the decisions,
ask the guy who makes the decisions."
Almost immediately thereafter, rumors bubbled,
ripples of those ideas from the prior summer.
Maybe Shaq would rather Riley coach the Heat.
In August, ESPN's Ric Bucher reported
Riley might indeed make that move,
and noted that Shaq didn't have Van Gundy's back in public.
Nonetheless, Miami opened the '05-'06 season
with the same coach.
O'Neal missed a bunch of that early season with injury,
but took the opportunity to dismiss that ESPN report.
The day Ric Bucher reported credibly would be the day
Shaq became the 48th white president of the United States.
Which is interesting and worth considering
because in December of 2005, Stan Van Gundy quit.
He said he wanted to focus on his family.
Everyone else said Shaq and/or Pat forced him out.
And, well, Riley did instantly give himself Van Gundy's job
and then coached Miami to aforementioned '06 title.
After the Heat won it all without him,
people felt bad for Van Gundy, but, you know,
it's hard to argue with a ring, and Stan soon resurfaced
in a prime role just a couple hundred miles away.
Head coach of the Orlando Magic, noted employers
of Dwight Howard, who many saw
as the next Shaq, and who Shaq saw as an obnoxious poser.
There was plenty of beef between these two
and it was a Shaq-Howard collision that inflamed
the Shaq-Van Gundy beef.
In March of 2009, Shaq, now with the Phoenix Suns,
hit the floor while defending a Dwight Howard post up dunk.
Look closely at the timing and the angle,
and I think you can pretty fairly say
that Shaq exaggerated contact to try to draw a foul.
It happens, but it's the kind of behavior
for which Shaq himself might disparage an opponent.
Because of that, Van Gundy, razzed Shaq about it
during the game and kept going afterward.
He was shocked to see his old player take a fall.
He said Shaq should stand up and play like a man.
And he even used the unspeakable F-word.
You better believe Shaq responded.
Good Lord, did he respond.
First, he defended himself against that loathsome F-word
and offered a weird little lecture on semantics.
Then Shaq pointed a cannon at man Gundy
repeatedly belittling his former coach's entire career.
- One thing I really despise as a front runner.
So, you know, I know for a fact that he's a master of panic
and you know, when it gets time for, you know
his team to go in the postseason and do certain things.
So he will let him down because of his panic.
And I've been there before I played for him, so.
- [Narrator] That wasn't even all of it.
Shaq called van Gundy, a nobody
and said he wasn't gonna let, nobody's take shots at him.
Oh, and one more thing, make sure you print this.
Everybody who plays for Van Gundy dislikes him.
This is what's known among students
of beef as a spicy meatball, mama Mia.
Van Gundy wasn't gonna valuate it back though.
He laughed, he called Shaq sensitive
and basically left it at that.
Dwight wanted no part of this
but other magic players stepped up to be like, yeah, hey
you know, we like our coach just fine, sometimes.
Shaq didn't find any of this funny.
And for a little while they went their separate ways.
Shaq's career wound down
and when reminded of the blow up
he said he was just defending himself,
that it wasn't his style to call people out.
I disagree, but okay.
Van Gundy, meanwhile coached the Magic
to the oh nine finals
but things soured thereafter.
Stan's reputation took a hit, in large part because
he and Dwight had a falling out that ended quite awkwardly
with Stan telling reporters that Dwight wanted him fired
followed by Stan indeed getting fired soon thereafter.
History was repeating itself or was it?
A year prior Shaq had released a book
and therein insisted he had nothing to do
with Van Gundy's exit from Miami in 2005.
That that had more to do
with a rift between Van Gundy and Pat Riley.
There's definitely something to that.
But I will note
that Shaq also mentioned Van Gundy's distaste
for his behavior and claimed that Miami would not
have won the '06 title if Van Gundy remained their coach.
And now post book publication, Shaq weighed
in on the stand Dwight breakup of 2012.
Even though Shaq very publicly despised Dwight Howard,
he took Dwight's side.
- First of all, private conversations should never
be brought public.
I think it was a Bush league moved by Stan Van Gundy,
really, personally, first of all,
he's lost his team forever now.
That right there can never be repaired.
Players respect guys with proven resumes, you know
Stan's been there a while,
he's a good coach, but as you know, in this league
good is not good enough,
it's all about winning championships.
And I think that sometimes
they don't respect his decision making.
- That stuff sounds a lot like the reasons people believed
that Shaq preferred Pat Riley to Van Gundy
back in 2005, when he talks like that
it becomes difficult to believe that Shaq had nothing to do
with Van Gundy's sudden Heat departure back then.
Perhaps he was just a smoother operator
than young Dwight that would certainly fit
with the low level of provocation it took
for Shaq to verbally dismember his former coach
just a couple years later.
Shaq's got plenty of beef's
but he tends to cook them up on his own terms.
and to have fun with them.
This one kind of put him on the defensive
and it took way harsher tone than we're used to.
In any event, things turned out okay enough,
Van Gundy kept getting jobs
and kept having unpleasant exits.
In between and since you'll sometimes see him on TV
working alongside shack with minimal
awkward acknowledgement of their time together.
- And I'm also gonna need some stories
about D Wade and Shaq
- [Shaq] Don't do it coach.
- [Narrator] So this was a brief beef and mostly
and under the surface beef, but don't forget
that it included some unusually nasty words
and at its outset, it may have helped shape NBA history.
Thank you so much for watching beef history.
Here's that Shaq-Dwight beef I mentioned,
and in fact, Shaq has even more beef than just that, enjoy.