Miami ? His hair is still slicked back, although now tinged with gray. The “Showtime” style he used to win four championships in the 1980s is a fading memory. His intensity on the sideline just wasn’t the same.

Pat Riley resigned as coach of the Miami Heat Friday, four days before the team he reloaded with young but largely unproven talent opens its season.

Riley will remain as team president, but he turned over the coaching responsibilities to Stan Van Gundy, his top assistant during the past eight years with the Heat.

“It’s not about me today. It really isn’t,” Riley said. “It’s about the Heat and all those season-ticket holders that have bought seats and sponsors that are starting to come out now because of Caron Butler, Dwyane Wade, Lamar Odom and the possibilities of those guys. It isn’t because of me. It’s time to do this.”

Riley, 58, ranks second in NBA history with 1,110 victories, and he led the Los Angeles Lakers to four championships in the 1980s. Riley won six division titles in his eight years in Miami, but only made the Eastern Conference finals once, losing to Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls in 1997.

But the Heat missed the playoffs the past two years, finishing at the bottom of the Atlantic Division last season at 25-57 — Riley’s worst record in 21 years as an NBA head coach.

“This organization has changed dramatically over the eight years since I’ve been here,” Riley said. “We had one great team that was a compelling, contending team that couldn’t get it done. The last three years have been patching and transitioning and getting to the point that we got to right now.”

Pat Riley shouts instructions at a Heat preseason game Tuesday night in Miami. Riley resigned as coach of the team Friday.

And that point is promising. The team is beneath the salary cap, has flexibility to possibly add big-ticket free agents after this season, and has players like Butler and Odom whom Riley believes are budding stars and worthy candidates to serve as the franchise’s cornerstones for the future.

Plus, Van Gundy — the brother of Houston Rockets coach Jeff Van Gundy — had long been ready to take over, Riley said. But the new Heat coach sounded humbled to follow his mentor.

“I’m not going to try to be Pat Riley,” he said. “I don’t think it’s a difference in philosophy so much as we’re just different people. I’m not getting into those comparisons. I’m certainly not looking to make a lot of Pat Riley comparisons here to begin with.”

Players were shocked by Riley’s announcement. So was Van Gundy, who now becomes part of just the second set of brothers to coach in the NBA; Herb and Larry Brown did so in the 1970s.

Van Gundy was a college head coach for eight seasons, three at Castleton State, four at UMass-Lowell and one at Wisconsin.