MIAMI — Sports reporters often share uneasy relationships with the athletes and teams they cover.

It can't be helped. After all, it's a journalist's job to report the bad along with the good.

Robert "Robes" Patton, say family and friends, transcended all that.

For 10 years he covered the Miami Heat professional basketball team for the Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel.

He counted among his friends superstars and journeymen ballplayers.

He enjoyed the camaraderie of reporters from competitor news agencies.

Readers appreciated his "common man" take on the game.

During part of that tenure, Robes Patton answered to "Bishop Patton" to members in the Boca Raton Ward of the Pompano Beach Florida Stake.

His Church family grieved when he died in 1998 following an 18-month battle with brain cancer. Their mourning was shared by Brother Patton's basketball family. When hundreds squeezed into his funeral at the Boca Raton meetinghouse, they were joined by fellow writers and NBA veterans like Alonzo Mourning, Grant Long and Miami Heat coach Pat Riley.

The league also paid tribute to Brother Patton, placing his name inside a black strip on the bottom of the official press pass for the first game of the 1999 NBA Finals.

On Jan. 8, the Heat dedicated the press room in the new American Airlines Arena in Brother Patton's memory. It is an unusual honor. Few U.S. sports arenas have rooms named for media members. A wall on one end of the room has a photo of Brother Patton, along with large copies of two articles written in his honor after his death and a plaque celebrating his memory and contributions. Coach Riley presented identical plaques to his three children and his parents, Robert and Nancy Patton.

"We always looked at [Robert Patton] as someone who was special and a privilege to work with," Riley told friends and family during the dedication ceremony.

Brother Patton's wife, Kim, admits being surprised when she learned her husband's name would be immortalized at the new arena.

"Something like that never crossed my mind."

The Pattons met when they were attending Brigham Young University in the 1980s. They later married in the Atlanta Georgia Temple. Soon Brother Patton — who served a mission in Belgium and France — was a "wordsmith-of-all-trades" for the Scottsboro Daily Sentinel in Alabama, covering everything from sports to local government.

In 1986, Brother Patton was hired by the Sun-Sentinel. When Miami was awarded an NBA franchise, he became a Heat beat writer. Along the way, the Pattons had two sons and a daughter: Ian, Jamel and Adrienne.

Brother Patton's accessible writing went beyond scores and statistics, said John Patton, his brother.

"He always recognized that athletes were people first . . . he always kept [his job] in perspective," John Patton said.

Brother Patton was skilled at finding common ground with the people he covered. Over time, his NBA sources learned he could be respected and trusted. Even liked.

"He would trade recipes with players," laughed Sister Patton.

Such evenness made Brother Patton an ideal bishop. He was just as enthused speaking to his deacon's quorum as he was interviewing Pat Riley or Michael Jordan, John Patton said.

Brother Patton's cancer was diagnosed in 1997. He passed away when he was only 39.

Still, future generations of South Florida reporters need only enter the press room in the American Airlines Arena to be reminded they have a model of their own, "Robes" Patton.