Watch out Mardy Collins, there’s a new goon in town. He comes from the mean streets of Sioux City, Iowa, and doesn’t weigh 200 pounds soaking wet. But if you believe Pat Riley, this menace to society is going to claim another victim soon if he isn’t stopped.

The villain Riley speaks of is none other than Bulls bully Kirk Hinrich. Miami’s coach claimed it was a dirty play by the Chicago guard that resulted in a wrist injury to Dwyane Wade in the first quarter of the Heat’s loss in the Windy City on Wednesday.

“Hinrich pulled his hand. He does it all the time,” Riley told reporters afterward.”That’s what he does. Anytime Dwyane comes off screens, they will always grab his shirt or grab his hands. It’s a tactic down below the body — the official can’t see it. He had Dwyane’s hand, and [when Wade] tried to pull it out of there, I think something happened.”

In addition to the somewhat surreal scene of a coach complaining about Dwyane Wade not getting calls, it’s hard to fathom Hinrich as a danger to other players’ safety — well, unless his barber is involved.

The footage of Wade’s injury has been replayed far and wide, and it is an innocuous-looking play. There was some hand fighting byWade and Hinrich away from the ball, and then Wade’s pulling up and grabbing his wrist at the top of the key. This kind of hand-to-hand combat goes on away from the ball all the time in the NBA game, particularly between wing players trying to get into position to receive passes.

In fact, it’s a well-established part of the game. Reggie Miller and Richard Hamilton are past and present masters at this, karate-chopping their way to open spaces, while putting their defenders momentarily off balance with gentle nudges that aren’t strong enough to warrant a foul call. In turn, strong defenders like Hinrich and Bruce Bowen have developed their own menagerie of tricks to even the terms of combat.

Seen in that sense, we can just look at this as Riley gunning for an advantage down the road — hoping that, should his Heat recover and challenge for the Eastern crown, he might get a few extra whistles for Wade in a series against the Bulls.

But the punch line here is that, in the same game, one of Riley’s players committed an absolutely horrendous cheap shot, one that was far more worthy of scorn. Heat forward James Posey thwacked Chicago’s Luol Deng — the team’s best player this season — from behind on a breakaway and sent him to the floor. Posey was assessed a flagrant foul and immediately ejected from the game.

It was “not done with any intent except to stop the shot,” Riley said, which is technically true — he stopped Deng from shooting by clubbing him to the floor. Riley was also quoted as saying he thought Posey got all ball, which is true only if you think Deng’s head is made of synthetic fiber and filled with pressurized air.

This wasn’t Posey’s first rodeo, either. Posey committed a flagrant foul on Hinrich in last season’s playoffs, crosschecking him to the ground from behind to earn an ejection and a onegame suspension. He broke the nose of Chicago rookie Tyrus Thomas in an opening day blowout.

That Riley is his employer is no accident. In his two-plus decades of coaching, Riley has established a long history of employing players who are, shall we say, exuberant about giving hard fouls.

Charles Oakley and Anthony Mason are the most famous, especially locally, but try conducting a Web search of “Keith Askins flagrant” some time. Askins is best known around these parts for bludgeoning Keith Van Horn and then spitting at the Nets’ bench afterward. He earned plenty of other marks on his record during his run as Riley’s top goon — and now is one of his top assistants.

In other words, however much admiration we may have for Riley’s undeniable success as a basketball coach, he is about the last basketball coach on Earth — John Chaney and Isiah Thomas excepted — who should be calling out another team for a dirty play, especially one as non-threatening as the play in which Wade was hurt.

What this is really about, of course, is gamesmanship. Riley is trying to politicize the officiating process on two levels: in getting more attention paid to Hinrich in a possible playoff series, and in downplaying yet another questionable foul by Posey.

It might work. Posey’s cheap shot on Deng didn’t even make SportsCenter.

The league won’t announce any suspensions until before tip-off tonight, but if Posey is in the lineup against the Nets it will be an outrage — and a huge PR coup for Riley. (Wade, incidentally, is a game-time decision for tonight).

Riley has been an incredibly successful coach and one of the most pivotal figures in the league for the past two decades — nobody can seriously argue this. Nor can anyone call into question that he has done more to bring defense back into vogue than any coach since Red Auerbach. But it’s exactly the kind of play Posey made that has left an indelible stain on his legacy. It was Riley, with the Knicks of the mid-1990s, who continued the “gooning” trend of the ’90s that undid much of the good done by Bird and Magic (and, to be fair, Riley) in the previous decade.

These days, people forget this, but the rules on flagrant fouls weren’t even in place until the early 1990s, when teams like Riley’s Knicks and Chuck Daly’s Pistons were so physical — that these rules became essential.

Nevertheless, a decade later, Riley’s teams still are pushing the envelope on the line between a hard foul and a dirty play with plays like the one Posey made. Riley’s right about one thing: There definitely was a dirty play worth commenting on in Wednesday’s game. It just wasn’t the one Riley was talking about.

jhollinger@nysun.com