A former Kentucky Wildcat is about to receive the statue treatment by the world’s most famous basketball franchise. Pat Riley, known as the Godfather, will soon have a statue of himself erected at Star Plaza outside Crypto.com Arena, where the Los Angeles Lakers play their home games. The Lakers will honor Riley, who coached the […]
A former Kentucky Wildcat is about to receive the statue treatment by the world’s most famous basketball franchise.
Pat Riley, known as the Godfather, will soon have a statue of himself erected at Star Plaza outside Crypto.com Arena, where the Los Angeles Lakers play their home games. The Lakers will honor Riley, who coached the franchise to four NBA championships with the Showtime Lakers from 1981-90, with his own sculpture when the team hosts the longtime rival Boston Celtics on Feb. 22 during the upcoming 2025-26 season.
Riley, 80, will join the likes of basketball legends Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Magic Johnson, and Kobe Bryant as one of the select bronze statues located outside the Lakers’ arena. He becomes the eighth basketball name to be honored with a statue by the franchise. Riley also played for the Lakers from 1970-75 (including the 1972 title team) and spent time as the team’s broadcaster before becoming an assistant on staff in 1979.
But none of this would have been possible for Riley if he hadn’t gotten his start in basketball as a member of the Kentucky Wildcats.
Riley played four seasons (1964-67) at Kentucky, one on the freshman team and three more on varsity, under the then-head coach Adolph Rupp. A 6-foot-4 guard, the New York native was named All-SEC First Team as a junior and senior, even winning SEC Player of the Year in 1966 with per-game averages of 22 points and 8.9 rebounds. His No. 42 jersey is retired and hangs in the Rupp Arena rafters.
After his college days, Riley went on to be the No. 7 overall pick in the 1967 NBA Draft by the San Diego Rockets, now known as the Houston Rockets. He spent nearly a decade in the league with the Rockets, Lakers, and Phoenix Suns before retiring from playing in 1976. After a wildly successful two-decade stint coaching the Lakers as an assistant and head coach, he took over as the New York Knicks head coach from 1991-95, making the NBA Finals in 1994.
Riley’s career then took him to the Miami Heat, where he was the head coach from 1995-2008. Along the way, he won his fifth NBA title as a head coach in 2006 before stepping back and taking on a front office role in 2008 as the full-time president, a position he’s held ever since. Riley oversaw two more championships in 2012 and 2013 as the top decision-maker. Miami even named its court after him last season.
Across his time as a player, coach, and team president, Riley has nine NBA championships to his name. If anyone in the basketball world deserves a statue, it’s the Godfather. Let’s just hope it resembles him more closely than Dwayne Wade’s statue from the Heat did…
Category: Basketball
