Away from the center.(shortage of centers in professional basketball)

No one knows how to use big men better that Pat Riley, but now he's dealing with the downsizing and disappearance of centers just like everyone else

It's not that Pat Riley was oblivious to the trend, it's just that he never needed to pay much attention.

In his world, from Los Angeles to New York to Miami, what the rest of the NBA has longed for never had been in short supply.

With the Lakers, it was Wilt Chamberlain as a teammate and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in his first coaching gig. With the Knicks, there was Patrick Ewing. With the Heat, Alonzo Mourning.

A lack of quality big men in the NBA? To Pat Riley, the league's acknowledged curator of centers, it was all rumor.

Then came October, and the revelation that Mourning would be lost for at least the season with a serious kidney ailment.

Suddenly, Pat Riley was George Karl, Jerry Sloan and all the other NBA coaches searching for answers in the middle.