Blowout losses are becoming a regular occurrence for the Miami Heat, and last night’s 106-86 drubbing at the hands of San Antonio left Pat Riley sounding like a man who’d like to spend more time with Stan Van Gundy’s family. From the Miami Herald’s Israel Guttierez.

Riley laid into his team with a tirade that could almost be heard from the hallway outside the locker room, explained after the game exactly what’s happening with his team.

”[It has] been that way every time we get challenged,” Riley said. “Every single game that we play against somebody who is competitive and stays the course, we’ll find a point in the game where we’ll just let it go.

“We went from competing in the first quarter, and then we stopped communicating with each other, and then we started to complain. Then we got disgusted at ourselves. Then we went from disgusting to discouraging to despicable. That’s what I’m dealing with, and I’m part of that problem. I’m going to have to find a solution to this.”

‘Eleven years I’ve been here and I built this franchise with some people who really care, and I’ve gone through some rebuilding and a lot of pain to get to this point, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to allow people to crap on this franchise,” Riley said. “They can crap on me, but not the franchise.”

Perhaps the only sight more surprising than Utah running their league best-record to 11-1 with a 110-101 defeat of Sacramento was Darko Milicic coming up with a big 4th quarter (11 points, 4 recounds) in Orlando’s 96-91 win over Indy. The Magic have an early lead in a screwy Southeast Division, what with Miami struggling and Washington unable to win on the road, and could be a threat in the sea of mediocrity that is the Eastern Conference if Darko shows up every now and then.