Riley Will Use Spoonful of Sugar With His Medicine

Miami Heat Coach Pat Riley, whose team was eliminated in the NBA playoffs by New York, has had a lot of time to think about it and now he is analyzing himself:

“I have to step back on my drive--on what I demand and what I expect,” Riley told Dan Le Batard of the Miami Herald. “I was a little too hard on them after games this year--too personal and with some of them, I went too deep.

“You can hit a point too hard. I fear some key players look at me now and think, ‘He doesn’t believe in me. He doesn’t trust me. I’m never going to be good enough for him.’

“And when you get that, you run the risk of those players quitting on you.”

Comment: Whew!

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Trivia time: Citation, the 1948 Triple Crown winner, raced for the 45th and last time when he won the 1951 Hollywood Gold Cup, which will be renewed Sunday at Hollywood Park. What was distinctive about Citation’s victory?

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Cool it, Chili: New York Yankee designated hitter Chili Davis, when told by Jerry Crasnick of the Bloomberg News Service that he has gone almost 2,000 at-bats without a triple.

“Now that I’m aware of it, I’m going for it. I’m just going to run until my hamstrings pop. I won’t be sucking wind too bad, but they might have to get the stretcher out.”

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Did they gamble? From the Morning Line column of the Dallas Morning News: “The National Assn. of Collegiate Athletic Directors just held its annual conference in Reno, Nev.

“The last time we checked, you could double down, shoot craps, spin roulette wheels and, yikes, even lay some dough on college football games around there.

“Remember, some of those ADs once considered denying credentials to certain events for newspapers that ran the Las Vegas lines?”

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Oops, there it goes: Tom Cushman of the San Diego Union-Tribune, writing on the domed greens of Pinehurst No. 2, site of the recent U.S. Open: “It’s like trying to drop a ball on the deck of a ship.”

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FYI: About 59,525 pounds of strawberries, 7,397 quarts of cream and 12,500 bottles of champagne were consumed last year at Wimbledon by 424,998 fans.

Where were the beer drinkers?

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Trivia answer: Citation became horse racing’s first millionaire.

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For the record: Marcus Camby of the New York Knicks should be added to the list of Wooden Award winners playing in the NBA finals. He was omitted from an item in Sunday’s briefing.

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And finally: Mike Littwin of the Rocky Mountain News writing on the sluggish play in the NBA:

“The NBA is supposed to be a highlight-film game. It’s the game that’s supposed to to make your jaw drop, and not into a yawn.

“As a game that once routinely defied gravity, it now defies other laws of physics. Try out this theory of relativity:

“How can you have a 24-second clock and still be slow? The problem is, the only thing that runs is the clock. What I’m saying is--rim shot, please--a fast break in the NBA now means a 20-second timeout.”