Heat’s Erik Spoelstra reflects on impact of Rick Adelman: ‘I really looked up to him’
The impact Miami Heat president Pat Riley has had on Heat head coach Erik Spoelstra is well-documented. But it’s another Hall of Famer who drew Spoelstra into coaching.
Rick Adelman, a Basketball Hall of Fame inductee who played seven NBA seasons before becoming one of the sport’s all-time winningest coaches, was Spoelstra’s first coaching role model.
“He became the reason why I decided to pursue the profession of coaching,” said Spoelstra, who grew up in Portland while Adelman was having success as the Portland Trail Blazers’ head coach.
The National Basketball Coaches Association announced Adelman’s death on Monday. Adelman died at 79, but not before leaving his mark on the NBA and becoming one of Spoelstra’s biggest basketball influences.
Spoelstra’s connection to Adelman is even stronger because he grew up around the Adelman family. With Spoelstra’s father, Jon Spoelstra, serving as a Trail Blazers executive while Adelman was a Trail Blazers coach, their families were together a lot in the 1980s.
“The organizations were much different in the ‘80s, they were so much smaller,” Spoelstra said to the Miami Herald in the wake of Adelman’s passing. “And so, the Adleman kids and the Spoelstra kids were the ones that were running around at all the games and the functions, and during the summer during the functions. I got to know their family really well.”
As a teenager, Spoelstra would often find himself in Adelman’s home office during gatherings at the Adelmans’ Bull Mountain home in the Portland area. Spoelstra would sometimes sit in that office for hours scouring through the different VHS tapes and scouting reports that filled the room.
“I was just in awe of the basketball intel that was in that office,” said Spoelstra, who has established himself as one of the top coaches in the NBA and is already the winningest head coach in Heat history in both the regular season and playoffs. “I would just sit in there sometimes for a couple of hours just looking at all the videos and looking at scouting reports and looking at his personal notes on reflections after games and just incredible information. And I look back on it now and just I look back on those times so fondly. Those were some of the best days during the summer. ... It was basketball heaven there.”
Spoelstra wasn’t the only future basketball coach who would sit in Adelman’s office during that time. Three of Adelman’s children ended up having a career in basketball.
David Adelman, Adelman’s youngest son, is currently the head coach of the Denver Nuggets. Kathy, the oldest daughter, became a successful high school girls coach in Portland. R.J., the oldest son, became the Minnesota Timberwolves’ director of player personnel after serving as an assistant under Adelman with the Houston Rockets before R.J. died in 2018.
“R.J. would have been a longtime NBA executive. And Kathy may be the most talented coach out of all of us,” Spoelstra said after recently completing his 18th season as the Heat’s head coach. “... And David just had the exposure that was 10 times what we all had because he had it when he was 6 years old. He was always hanging around R.J. and Kathy, and he was always at his dad’s side. He was a ball boy forever. He was always in the locker rooms. So he just understood basketball culture from an early age. David was probably 10, 12 years old. And he was the one that would say, ‘Hey, look at this edit,’ or, ‘look at this report.’ So he’s become a brilliant basketball mind.”
Adelman ranks 10th on the NBA’s all-time wins list for head coaches. He took the Trail Blazers to the NBA Finals twice and also spent time as the head coach for the Sacramento Kings, Rockets, Timberwolves and Golden State Warriors.
The only coaches who coached more games and had a better winning percentage than Adelman in NBA history were Riley, Gregg Popovich, Jerry Sloan and George Karl.
“He was able to do things in this profession with such success and humility and grace and high character,” Spoelstra continued on Adelman. “Really understated. But you knew who the coach was at every place he’s been. He’s a Hall of Famer, but I think he’s still underrated in terms of how brilliant he was as a basketball mind. And he always had great defensive teams, but his offensive brilliance as a basketball coach stood out to me.”
Spoelstra added that “everybody in the league” has a package of offensive plays that have Adelman’s fingerprints on it — sets that have a big man playing out of the elbow in a triple-threat position (able to shoot, pass or dribble).
“Everything you see right now with [Nikola] Jokic playing out of the elbow, top of the floor. They’re all shades of what [Adelman] did decades ago in Sacramento,” Spoelstra said. “And every single team, including us, has a package of plays where you run out of the elbow set. And there are different options out of that. But all four teams in the conference finals have a version of that. And, yeah, Rick is the godfather of that.”
Spoelstra then recalled what he labeled as “one of my favorite moments of my career,” when he was able to be part of a conversation that involved both Adelman and Riley. With Adelman receiving the 2023 Chuck Daly Lifetime Achievement Award ahead of Game 2 of the 2023 NBA Finals between the Heat and Nuggets in Denver, Spoelstra was able to catch up with Adelman.
“Then Pat was walking by. So Pat came over and said hello,” Spoelstra said. “And they talked and reminisced for a few minutes. And then I was able to take a photo with the two of them. It would have been a perfect photo if my dad was in there. But in terms of this profession of the two people that have had the biggest impact on me, that was one of my favorite moments was to get that picture.”
Adelman was Spoelstra’s coaching role model before Spoelstra even entered the profession. Then Riley became the coach Spoelstra looked up to when Spoelstra was hired by the Heat as the video coordinator in 1995.
“They’re titans in the profession. They are,” Spoelstra said of Adelman and Riley. “Maybe the greatest compliment for any of us, if you could fall somewhere where you take pieces of each of them. The stories have been told about how much Pat has been an influence on me. And that was from 24 years on. But in the formative years of why I wanted to get into coaching as a high school player, it was because of Rick.”
That’s the type of impact Adelman had on Spoelstra. Adelman still texted Spoelstra words of encouragement from time to time during the long NBA season in recent years, with the last time the two spoke coming after a fire that destroyed Spoelstra’s home in November.
“I admired him so much. I really looked up to him,” Spoelstra said. “I admired him. I wanted to take qualities that he had and try to be like him. He was just an incredible person. Super giving. Really bright and a great family man. And I became very close to their family. So, I just saw what he did, and I just constantly thought, like, that looks like a lot of fun. And the way he did it, I just really respected and admired him so much for those qualities that he brought to the profession.”
