On verge of passing Pat Riley, Erik Spoelstra remembers when he just wanted to hang on
Erik Spoelstra had not been with the Miami Heat long when the organization hired the Pat Riley as its coach back in 1995. Spoelstra had just been hired as the Heat’s video coordinator by the previous regime, but Riley decided to keep the newcomer around.
For whatever reason, Spoelstra said he can vividly recall a conversation he had with his father after his first season in Miami wrapped up. Jon Spoelstra had a long history in the NBA which included more than a decade as the general manager of the Portland Trail Blazers and a 90-day stint as the general manager of the Denver Nuggets, so he knows better than anyone about the potential instability of working in professional sports and lectured his son.
“Look, you’re working for a Hall of Famer. This is an incredible opportunity,” he said. “I know this sounds crazy, but this might be an eight-to-10year run. Don’t screw it up. Just find a way to hang on and stay there.”
Almost 25 years later, Spoelstra has risen way from video coordinator to coach and Wednesday he will become the Heat’s all-time leader in games coached when his team takes the floor to face the Los Angeles Clippers at 7:30 p.m. at AmericanAirlines Arena.
Following shootaround Wednesday in Miami, Spoelstra was in a rare reflective mood fewer than eight hours before tipoff of his 850th game as the Heat’s coach. Once the game begins, Spoelstra will pass Riley, who mentored Spoelstra and coached Miami for 849 games across two stints until he stepped down to give the job to Spoelstra in 2008.
“Looking back on that now,” said Spoelstra, recalling the conversation with his father, “my dad obviously had been fired from a couple different places, he knew the real NBA and the reality of that is usually it’s a three or four-year run, and he was saying it almost as such an exaggeration that, Hey, this literally could been an eight-to-10-year run. You can’t get that in pro sports. It doesn’t matter what your position is, it doesn’t matter if you ever get promoted, just find a way to hang with this guy, this Hall of Famer, so I guess the lesson to that is I’m still just trying to hang on, I’m trying to work for him for as long as I possibly can.”
The games-coached mark will just be another notch in his legacy as the most successful coach in franchise history. Spoelstra is already the franchise leader with 506 wins, a .596 winning percentage, 71 postseason wins and a .602 postseason winning percentage. He was the coach on the sidelines for two of Miami’s three NBA championships in 2012 and 2013, and guided the Heat to the NBA Finals two more times.
After spending two years as a video coordinator, Spoelstra became an assistant coach for Miami in 1997 and became one of Riley’s most trusted assistants, helping the Heat win the 2006 NBA title.
As Riley’s coaching career neared its end, he would half joke with Spoelstra on the airplane following some tough losses, telling the assistant next season he would be sitting in Riley’s place.
“I’d immediately think about throwing up,” Spoelstra said at his post-shootaround news conference Wednesday, “just from the nerves and the idea of that just seemed way too overwhelming.”
A few days after the 2007-08 season finished, Riley called Spoelstra into his office — “in true ‘Godfather’ fashion,” Spoelstra describes the scene, “dark office, a lamp” — and told Spoelstra it was his turn. In each of his frist two seasons, Spoelstra guided Miami to the playoffs, then LeBron James arrived in 2010. The Big 3 era was underway, and Spoelstra was suddenly under the microscope every day.
Behind the scenes, there were never questions about Spoelstra’s job security. Riley, now team president, had full trust in his successor even when James, according to “The Soul of Basketball” by Ian Thomsen, asked the Hall of Famer whether he ever had “the itch to coach again.”
“We have our system,” said post player Udonis Haslem, who has played for the Heat for the entirety of Spoelstra’s tenure as coach. “Our system never changed, so you talk about system, you want somebody that’s been a part of this family to implement that system and translate that message over, and what person to do that much better than somebody who was raised in our culture?”
Although scrutiny on Spoelstra has never been greater than early in the Big 3 era, he has been far from flawless since. Miami (22-23) has missed the playoffs in two of the past four seasons and is on pace to finish worse than .500 for only the second time in Spoelstra’s tenure.
Spoelstra often says — and he knows Riley hates when he does — he would have been fired by now if he as with some other organizations. Confidence from the top down is why he has earned the right to coach more games for the Heat than anyone else and why he will almost certainly remain in Miami for years to come.
“I wouldn’t expect anything different from the organization when it comes to Coach Spo,” Dwyane Wade said at a news conference following shootaround Wednesday. “Even, I feel, when he gets done and he don’t want to coach no more, there’ll be another position for him somewhere else, so he’ll probably have the longest run when it’s all said and done.”
Heat changes up starting lineup
The Heat’s much-maligned starting lineup will be different Wednesday against the Clippers. Miami is swapping swingman Rodney McGruder out in place of guard Tyler Johnson, who will join combo guard Josh Richardson, point forward Justise Winslow, forward James Johnson and center Hassan Whiteside as the starting five.
The Heat’s primary starting lineup has played together 15 seasons this year and is Miami’s only group to play more than 100 minutes this year. The Heat settled on this starting five late last year when guard Goran Dragic went down with a right knee injury and shifted Winslow to point guard, but in Miami’s last 10 games the starting group has posted a plus-minus of minus-36.
This story was originally published January 23, 2019 at 2:00 PM.