Eddie Jones arrived in South Florida as an All-Star, the next wave, the hometown kid poised to lead the Heat out of a cycle of playoff misery.
He was thinking big. Pat Riley was thinking big. Expectations were substantial.

That was then.

Flash forward to this month, with Riley describing the "ideal" for this season's Heat as fielding four 15-point scorers, a load split evenly among Lamar Odom, Caron Butler, Dwyane Wade and Jones.

"I don't think," the Heat coach says, "there's one guy where we're going to give the ball to this guy and he's going to become Tracy McGrady."

Four years into his Heat tenure, Eddie Jones has become what he seemingly most loathed being labeled, a complementary player. Perhaps even more significant is that the 6-foot-6 guard accepts the reality -- either as a more mature presence at 31, or a beaten-down one.

"I'm a steady player," he says, "I'm going to give you the same thing every night."

On this day, Eddie Jones is in one of his moods.

Thank goodness it's a good mood.

It frees up the sometimes stand-offish 6-foot-6 guard to discuss subjects such as his status in the NBA, talk that he has been a disappointment in his three seasons with the Heat, that he should be traded, that he's not a team leader.

"My status in the league right now," the nine-year veteran and three-time All-Star said, "is I think people have forgotten about me. I'm not in the playoffs. My numbers are the same, but I'm not in the playoffs. I think when you're not winning, they don't think anything of you."

That's not the sentiment on the Heat for now.

Although the team is developing a new foundation with forwards Caron Butler and Lamar Odom and rookie guard Dwyane Wade, Jones isn't on the trading block.

"Contrary to all these reports," coach Pat Riley said, "he's a productive player."

There was a time when Pat Riley's name was synonymous with beautiful basketball, when Magic Johnson led the greatest fast break ever, when James Worthy finished with statuesque dunks, when the half-court set was the domain of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's majestic sky hook.

It was the game at its finest, Showtime in Los Angeles, and Riley, with his slicked-back hair and Armani suits, presided over it perfectly as the stylish architect of it all.

But over the past 12 years, Riley beat that image into the ground and buried it, his teams in New York and Miami using a brutal type of thuggery that was palatable only because it produced victories.

Now, after failing to make the playoffs the last two seasons, Riley is ready to revert. When the Miami Heat opens training camp this week, Riley will introduce his team to a poor man's version of Showtime. It will be a crude copy to be sure, but Riley nonetheless plans to run and play pretty again.

The key to Miami's transformation will be two young players the team acquired this off-season, the free agent Lamar Odom and the first-round draft pick Dwyane Wade. Barring injuries or new revelations during training camp, Riley will start Wade and Odom alongside Caron Butler, Eddie Jones and Brian Grant.

That lineup features no true point guard and no true center, just four extremely versatile and athletic players (none smaller than 6 feet 4 inches) and one hardy rebounder in Grant.

Center Sean Marks has signed with the San Antonio Spurs after two injury-riddled seasons with the Heat, agent Marc Fleisher said Friday.

Marks, a member of the New Zealand national team that finished fourth at the 2002 World Championships, was limited to 44 games in his two seasons under Pat Riley.

The 6-foot-10 outside shooter faces long odds with the Spurs, with Tim Duncan, Rasho Nesterovic, Malik Rose, Kevin Willis and Robert Horry already in place in San Antonio's power rotation.

Fleisher, who also represents Heat free-agent center Vladimir Stepania, said Stepania has yet to reach a free-agent agreement. Fleisher said there has not been contact with the Heat regarding Stepania since Wednesday.

Despite aggressive efforts by Pat Riley to retain Vladimir Stepania, the free-agent center continues to consider other offers.

``We're in discussions with two teams, neither of which are the Heat, and something could happen as soon as [today],'' agent Marc Fleisher said. ``Pat Riley called me [Wednesday] expressing a desire to sign him. Obviously, they don't have any money. Pat did his best sales job, which I related to Valdi, and Vladi hasn't shut the door.''

The Heat in August extended a one-year, $3 million offer to the reserve 7-footer. Stepania, who earned $1.4 million this past season, bypassed that bid in hopes of a lengthier deal.

``He felt he deserved more, and the team agreed with him but was only willing to go out one year.''

The Heat made the $3 million bid to Stepania before it signed free-agent forward Lamar Odom to a six-year, $65 million deal. The Heat now can only offer Stepania the veteran's minimum, which for five years of service is $751,000.

Riley expressed the possibility of Stepania, 27, eventually landing a more lucrative deal by remaining with the team, but Fleisher expressed skepticism about getting caught in a cycle of one-year, minimal deals.

Bimbo Coles was a part of the Heat's first two playoff teams in 1992 and 1994.

Nine years after that second playoff appearance, Coles is back. And he believes the playoffs can be in the Heat's immediate future once again.

''I believe we can win this year,'' Coles said Wednesday, one day after signing a one-year deal with the Heat. ``I remember when I first got here [in 1990] we had a lot of talent, but it took us a little bit longer to get the playoffs. I think this team is similar, but we didn't have Coach [Pat] Riley as a coach, and we really didn't have any veteran leadership on that team.

``I think with the youth and some of the veteran leadership and the coaching staff that we have here, we can do some good things.''

The Heat completed one aspect of its bench Tuesday when it reached back to its past and signed veteran guard Bimbo Coles, a member of the organization in the 1990s, to a one-year contract.

Now all Miami has to do is complete its reserve unit with a big man or two, which it is trying to do, and it will be ready when training camp opens Oct. 1.

Coles, 35, will earn $1.3 million, the minimum wage for a player with 13 years' experience. He's averaged 8.0 points and 4.4 assists in his career with Miami, Golden State, Atlanta, Cleveland and Boston.

Last season with Cleveland and Boston he averaged 4.4 points and 2.1 assists per game.

At 6-feet-2, Coles is known as a defensive-minded player who is expected to be an extension of coach Pat Riley to a certain extent.

He spent last season "somewhere in western China, I'm not really sure where."

That gave Ike Austin all the more reason to look for a familiar place to resuscitate his NBA career.

Out of the league for nearly two seasons, Austin was getting settled in Tuesday at AmericanAirlines Arena, hopeful, at 34, of making a return to the league in the lone place where he had flourished in his nine pro seasons.

"This is what I need," the 6-foot-10 center said of the Pat Riley workouts that pushed him to the NBA's Most Improved Player award in 1997. "I've played here. This is pretty cool."

Two factors have limited Austin since entering the NBA in 1991 with the Utah Jazz -- poor conditioning and troublesome knees.

The conditioning has come around a bit. As for the knees, well, Austin related that Heat physician Harlan Selesnick told him Monday that he never thought the center would make it this long when he first joined the franchise in 1996 and that not much has changed structurally since then.

Lost in a rebuilding process by the Memphis Grizzlies in 2002, Austin spent last season with the Xinjiang Flying Tigers, in a province bordered by Pakistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, the Republic of Mongolia, Gansu, Qinghai, Tibet and India.

To play the part of experienced mentor, the Miami Heat will turn to an old Heat veteran.

Bimbo Coles, who spent the first five-plus seasons of his career with the Heat, is in Miami and is expected to sign a one-year contract with the team today.

Heat coach Pat Riley has already penciled in rookie Dwyane Wade as the team's starting point guard and has signed Rafer Alston as a probable backup. But Riley still felt he needed a veteran at the position to mentor Wade and Alston, and to fill in and play when necessary.

Coles met with Riley in August and the two discussed the possibility of him returning to the Heat. Riley has fond memories of Coles from his first season as the Heat coach. In 1995-96, Coles played and started 52 games under Riley, averaging 12.8 points, 5.7 assists and 3.9 rebounds. It had been the best season of his career, but on Feb. 22, 1996, Coles was traded along with Kevin Willis to Golden State for Tim Hardaway and Chris Gatling. Hardaway went on to be the best point guard in Heat franchise history.

It would change the entire outlook of the coming N.B.A. season, deliver the finals from the land of the lopsided and perhaps even draw a few fans to Continental Arena. The return of the intimidating, sneering Alonzo Mourning is just what is needed by the Nets, the two-time runner-up to the league champion, and by the N.B.A., which could use a feel-good story or two.

But no one - not Mourning, not his doctors, not the Nets - will predict that Mourning will finish even the first month of the season, let alone return to dominance for 82 games. All they can do is hope that he stages a stirring comeback from the kidney disorder that nearly ended his career three years ago.

"Nobody can predict the future," said Gerald Appel, Mourning's doctor. "He's in partial remission. He's never been in complete remission. It's always been partial. At any point, his kidney disease could get bad. Alonzo and I have always had a deal that we will take this one month at a time, one day at a time. We won't look too far down the road.

"So when people say, 'Can he play?' I say: 'Well, he can play today. I can't tell you about next week.' "