Pat Riley's basketball world has collapsed around him this season and the reasons are just as baffling as his actual fall from grace. Is it purely the misfortune of illness and age that has doomed the Miami Heat? Or have Riley's own errors in judgement been the primary factors in sullying one of the game's greatest coaching legacies?

On the one hand, Miami can be found near the bottom of the Eastern Conference because Alonzo Mourning's ferocity has been sapped by a debilitating kidney disease. Still solid, but all too often unspectacular, Mourning's stamina has dropped to the point that it looks at times as if he has sandbags tied to his legs and soup in his lungs.

Equally as important, Riley the general manager/president seems to have undermined Riley the coach with several questionable personnel decisions. The free-agent acquisitions of Eddie Jones and Brian Grant now look like $93 million mistakes. The unloading of Anthony Mason, Tim Hardaway and Dan Majerle gutted the team of its heart. And Riley's disdain for a youth movement that might have injected some much-needed athleticism has left the roster littered with aging journeymen such as Kendall Gill, LaPhonso Ellis, Chris Gatling and Jimmy Jackson.

Add it all together and Riley has fallen to depths never before seen in his illustrious coaching career. A 2-12 start and a 14-26 record heading into the halfway point of the season have him in dire jeopardy of missing the playoffs for the first time in 20 seasons. His Heat head into tonight's game in Orlando riding a six-game winning streak, but the early-season damage might be too great to salvage an otherwise sour season.

"If I were an impressionable rookie, I'd want to go hide in a hole somewhere," Riley, 56, said recently. "But I have to take the good with the bad, and I've had 99 percent good in my career. You get over it and you move on."

Maybe the most surprising aspect is how former players and rivals throughout the NBA have taken particular pride in seeing the veteran coach fall flat on his face. It seems the only consistent shots falling in Miami this season have been the ones levied verbally at Riley's often maniacal methods. Jamal Mashburn, Hardaway and Mason -- all former Heat players exiled by Riley -- have shredded him publicly, while others have chuckled privately as the defeats have piled up.

"There's a lot of jealousy toward Riley because he's been so successful," said Magic coach Doc Rivers, who played for Riley in New York for 21/2 seasons. "They couldn't ever attack him before because he was always on top. But now that there's finally a chink in the armor, people have gone overboard attacking him. And, in my opinion, that's wrong."

Magic forward Monty Williams, another former pupil of Riley's, also has been disgusted by the attacks on the coach who has 1,063 regular-season wins, 155 playoff victories and four NBA championships.

"A lot of those people are taking shots at him in a cowardly way," Williams said. "They are getting away from him and then taking shots at him. If you're going to do it, do it to his face. At least give the guy respect. He's won the championships to at least merit that respect."

Riley's dream of bringing a championship to South Florida collapsed miserably last spring when the Heat were embarrassed and run out of the playoffs by the lightly regarded Charlotte Hornets.

It was the fourth time in six seasons that the Heat had failed to make it out of the first round, leaving Riley once again stunned and staggered. But even after orders came to scale back the payroll to $52 million, he couldn't have possibly envisioned what would happen this season.

Miami dropped 12 of its first 14 games, including six in a row at home. During one particular ugly stretch, Miami lost 12 games in a row. They were blown out and beaten in the clutch. As a result, the first prolonged losing streak of his coaching career had Riley sounding as if he was close to going over the edge.

"The one thing that I think we've always tried to build here in Miami is an incredible pride in the culture of the Heat," Riley said. "Regardless of what happened in the playoffs, this team was always down-and-dirty, diehard Heat. This would never happen with teams that we had in the past."

All the things that seemed to go right for Riley in the past seemed to have gone wrong this season. Veteran players started coasting and tuning out his many motivational ploys. Some stopped playing the kind of defense he demands and have folded down the stretch more times than he chooses to remember. The mental toughness has been replaced with white flags and a general malaise throughout the team.

"I've never felt a connection with this team from day one," Riley fumed. "They haven't connected with one another, haven't connected on the court. There's not a lot of passion. They only get passionate after the fact."

Making matters worse, Mourning tragically became a shadow of the dominant center he had been in the past. That falloff only exposed Jones' poor shooting, Grant's lack of size and true post game and Anthony Carter's shortcomings as a point guard replacement for Hardaway.

But Riley's message seems to have started sinking in, and remarkably the Heat found themselves where most Eastern Conference teams go to die: against the rugged Western Conference. Miami started their impressive six-game winning streak by winning in Golden State, Los Angeles (Lakers) and Portland.

"I do think some teams are hearing footsteps," Riley bragged. "But I don't think they have any fear of us at this point. They just have to look at our record."

Miami's midseason makeover is a credit to Riley's intense desire to succeed, Rivers said. Rivers said that his former coach is one of the greatest influences on his life and he is perturbed by the way Riley is often perceived by outsiders.

"I loved playing for him and I tell people it was one of the best experiences I ever had in basketball," said Rivers, a guard for Riley's Knicks from 1992-95. "He's demanding, but he's not abusive at all. Never did I feel uncomfortable playing for him. He'll push you harder than you've ever been pushed. Go was his pushing word -- go get 'em, go attack, go more, go more. If that's too demanding, well we've got a big problem in this league.

"And he demands even more of himself. That's his secret and that's why players play for him. He's in it for the win and there's no side agenda. What he's trying to sell is that he's going to give his all and players should give their all and it's only about winning. He's not playing for a new contract or the fame. He only wants that championship, and his way of doing that is by driving you. His single biggest secret is his determination to win."