And now, everything that Pat Riley did in South Beach this summer, all the promises to Micky Arison and the commitments to shake up his team, all of that now rests in the joints in the left leg of one Tim Hardaway.

	With Zo out, this is now Hardaway's chance to lead.

It is not that the Heat don't have Eddie Jones and Brian Grant and Anthony Mason, or that they won't contribute. But without Alonzo Mourning, the Heat aren't the same team. As long as Riles is around, Miami will defend, no matter who's on the floor. But the Heat will suffer from a leadership deficit. And that's where Hardaway comes in. He has to take charge. He was ready to do so even before Mourning's condition was finalized.

Hardaway knows that the word on him is he's a shell of his former self, that he's dragging his leg around, that he can't do what he used to. "That's what everybody's saying," Tim Bug admits. "But everybody still knows that I can take over a game. Everybody still know that I can run a team. Everybody still knows that when I'm here with the Miami Heat, that I give us confidence when I'm out there on the basketball court, because I'm a threat.

"Even if I can't move up and down, round, whatever, if I can't move quick or whatever, I'm still a threat out there on the court. And other teams understand that and they know that. So if I throw the ball to Eddie Jones, and they try to sink and fill, or when he goes to the basket, do whatever he needs doing, he sees me out there for a three, everybody knows I'm going to make that three, especially in crucial situations. So they know what I can do. Everybody say it's bone on bone, everybody say he's not quick, everybody say he can't take over a game, everybody says his toughness is gone. I'm back. I can't wait."

(Being a cynic, I asked three of Hardaway's Olympic teammates if he indeed was back. Each said yes. For what it's worth.)

Hardaway came to camp in great shape. He had his trainer in Australia with him during the Olympics. For the first time in three years, he was able to finish his physical tests for the Heat on the first day of camp. And with $6 million in weight-based incentives (not $4 million, as has been reported) on the line, Hardaway will be in shape all season. Not that he likes those incentives one bit.

"I just felt that I deserved it," Hardaway says. "You know, that's how I feel. Anybody can tell me anything about 'well, this could benefit you, that could benefit you, just go in there and do it.' I don't feel that way. I felt that I earned it, you know? Why not just give it to me? I earned it. I know what it takes. I was hurt for two years. I can't help injuries ... I should just make what I make, because it's going against the salary cap, anyway. So why not just give me my money? That's the way I feel. And I'm not trying to badmouth nobody. I wasn't trying to say anything about the Miami Heat and they organization. I'm just saying, you know, what's right is right."

	“	Even if I can't move up and down, round, whatever, if I can't move quick or whatever, I'm still a threat out there on the court. And other teams understand that and they know that. ”
		— Hardaway

He now says he wasn't serious about the Pacers, because once Indiana couldn't re-sign Mark Jackson, Hardaway says, he knew the Pacers wouldn't be interested in an older point guard. And he says there's no hard feelings toward Riley. And vice versa.

"That's business," Riles says. "And when it comes to business issues, and contracts, and money, that gets in between sometimes, the relationship between coach and player. And we walk around on eggshells with that for a while, but after a while we all understand that that's business. We feel like we gave Tim a very, very good contract. But he earned it. He really did. He earned it. And we hope to give him another one. And another one. And that's where we are."

One thing that can't be explained away, though, is Hardaway's contention that some of his teammates stopped listening to Riley last season.

"I don't think (Riley) was tuned out," Hardaway said. "We had a lot of pressure on us just to get past the first or the second round. Some guys was just fed up, fed up with a bunch of stuff, just fed up. It was like, it wasn't nothing rebellious or nothing like that, but they was just tired of just hearing him and being around and it wasn't, it wasn't the same like it was four years ago. Everybody was going their own way. It wasn't a team, it wasn't no togetherness. We didn't stick together, especially when it got real, real thick. And that bothered the team and that bothered him, too."

While Hardaway says Riley dealt with things correctly, Riley disputes the notion that anyone tuned him out.

"There's a real rumor around this league that you can't coach a team for more than five years because they'll tune anybody out," Riley says. "Well, that's a sad, sad, sad testimony on the part of players, you know, to be so typical. What it takes is to be atypical. You think they ever tuned out Red Auerbach? I didn't get tuned out in the '80s, when we were winning. Phil Jackson didn't get tuned out winning seven or eight years. Because we're not winning now, are the players gonna tune me out? Well, if they are, I'll know, and they can go start another song somewhere else."

During the offseason and training camp, Riley has called both himself and his players "failures" for their inability to break through and beat the Knicks. Hardaway concurs ... to a point.

"I don't think we're all failures," he says. "I think we just didn't make it to where he wanted us to make it to. Until we make it there, that's the word he wants to use. But I don't think we're failures. I think we try to do all we can do and if we don't make it there, we just don't make it. Look at John Stockton, look at Karl Malone. Are they failures? No, I don't think so. Because they didn't win a championship? They've been there twice, two years in a row, and they didn't win. So I don't think they're failures. They got there and just ran into Michael Jordan two years in a row."

So did the Heat. And time is running short on Hardaway, especially with Mourning gone for the season. Even with Mourning, Miami's depth up front was a question. In the past, the Heat always had an Ike Austin or an Otis Thorpe available to spell Mourning. Now, Miami is down to Duane Causwell and Todd Fuller to back up either Anthony Mason or Brian Grant. Grant says he'd play center if asked, but he broke down playing power forward in Portland.

That puts more pressure on Hardaway to not just lead, but score, play big minutes, defend full court (as he says he did in Australia) and be the one -- as he and Mourning did together the last couple of years -- to tell Riley when he needs to let up. It would be a lot if Hardaway was 24 and healthy, much less a decade older and not as healthy. But he's been ready ever since the Heat walked off the court last May, losers again to New York.

And, let's be frank. Hardaway only signed a one-year deal. To keep the money rolling in, he has to put up numbers and stay healthy. He insists he wants to finish his career in Miami and that he won't hold the Heat's negotiating stance against it next summer.

"If there's another incentive contract or whatever, who knows? I might take it, I might not," said Hardaway. "It just depends on how the year goes. That's how it is. That's why I signed a one-year deal, and whatever you do this year, it'll take you to the next year. It showed what teams want to do with you, and what your own team want to do with you. So I've just gotta take it year by year, and that's the way a 34-year-old guy has to do it in the league now."