Miami ? It’s easy to forget that Pat Riley was not born to coach.

He was born the son of a coach, yes. But few remember that, after Riley’s NBA playing career ended, he became part of the Los Angeles Lakers’ broadcast corps. It was from there that he was hired as an assistant coach, a promotion that paved the way for his ascension to head coach two years later.

His first season, the Lakers won the NBA championship. Soon, the man with so little coaching experience would become a giant.

“A silver spoon,” Riley says, “was shoved in my mouth.”

No, Patrick James Riley did not take the typical coaching path, for certain. Still, on Monday in San Antonio, his status as one of the game’s legends should become official: The Miami Heat coach likely will be beckoned to the Basketball Hall of Fame.

The pride of Schenectady, N.Y., a college star at Kentucky, a nine-season NBA player and one whose coaching fingerprints are on two of basketball’s proudest franchises – the Lakers and the New York Knicks – will be stamped as a great. His seven championships and 1,200-plus victories will be detailed on a wall in Springfield, Mass., a coach’s highest honor.

“I get choked up just thinking that honor’s going to be placed upon him,” says Ed Maull, Riley’s right-hand man with the Heat, a former NBA player himself who wiped away a tear when asked to imagine what the moment Monday would be like. “Him personally, even though he has that hard, crusty Irishness to him, I know that when he gets that call, it’ll hit him and he’ll get emotional.”

There’s a problem, though: Riley, who has an ego that some would consider boundless, doesn’t believe he’s worthy of the Hall.

The word “coach” is hallowed by Riley, who speaks with reverence when talking about people such as John Wooden and Bob Knight and Red Auerbach and Adolph Rupp and Don Haskins – five of the 80 coaches already enshrined. Riley’s father, Leon, was a baseball man most of his life, a success both as a player and manager.

“I really believe in the coaching profession and what the word coach means. … They are deserving, and I don’t belong,” Riley says.