‘Speak up so we can hear you!’ When Pat Riley decided Erik Spoelstra would lead Miami Heat | Opinion
There was this moment when in his mind Pat Riley baptized Erik Spoelstra as the next head coach of the Miami Heat. There was no ceremony to it. It was not an epiphany. But it was a test that would christen the young assistant coach as the heir who would succeed the legend.
And succeed in every sense of the word.
During the 2005-06 season, this was. Nobody knew the Heat would go on to win the franchise’s first NBA championship that summer.
Just before an off-day practice at the arena there would be a film session in a side room, as usual. Spoelstra brought in the video of the previous game that he had produced, as usual, then stepped aside for Riley to go over it with the team. As usual.
“You handle the video,” Riley suddenly told Spoelstra, with no prior notice.
“What do you mean?” said Spo.
“You go over every clip,” Riley recalls now what he told him. “Call out the players. ‘You didn’t get back on defense.’ ‘You didn’t take the charge.’ There he was in front of the team for the first time.”
In the rows of chairs sat a young Udonis Haslem, and budding superstar Dwyane Wade. Veterans such as Alonzo Mourning, Antoine Walker and Gary Payton were staring at the young assistant. Sitting front row-center, as he always did: a larger-than-life Shaquille O’Neal.
The first 30 seconds or so were rough.
“Speak up so we can hear you!” Riley boomed.
Instead of wilting, Spo found his flow.
“He was brilliant,” Riley recalled this week, in a lengthy conversation with the Miami Herald. “The players all sat up straight and showed him respect, and he did not fumble.”
Afterward the team cheered and swarmed to pat Spoelstra on the back, then left for the practice court.
Spoelstra, before heading back to the video room, told Riley, “I don’t wanna do that again.”
“Sometimes you have to stand up in front of those guys,” Riley told him that day. “Welcome to the first step of coaching.”
Looking back now: “That’s when he became a part of the inner circle,” says Riley, now club president.
Spoelstra, after a long climb of 13 years with the organization, would be head coach two years later. He still is today, in his 14th season, five NBA Finals appearances and two championships as head coach in his pocket, and with his team currently atop the densely packed Eastern Conference.
The dynamic between Riley and Spoelstra, now 51, is multifaceted. It is mentor-student, Zen master and protégé, Godfather and consigliere. “Father-son,” Riley offers.
Together those two have formed the most successful executive-head coach partnership in South Florida sports history, making the Heat our state-of-the-art pro franchise.
The relentless competitiveness of the Heat and Spoelstra’s longevity are themselves marvels. Only Don Shula’s 26 seasons as Dolphins head coach top Spoelstra’s continuing run in this market’s pro sports history. Riley had 10.
By comparison, Don Mattingly, unlocked to begin his seventh season as Marlins manager, is next longest tenured here. No Florida Panthers coach has lasted longer than three full seasons. Inter Miami is on its second coach in three years. (Canes football hasn’t had a head coach last longer than six years since Andy Gustafson left in 1963.)
When Spoelstra last month was named among the NBA’s 15 greatest coaches of all time as part of the league’s 75th anniversary (Riley was on it, too, of course), it affirmed everything his mentor believed about what made Spoelstra special.
The Big 3 era, when LeBron James and Chris Bosh joined Wade, was a gift and a burden for Spo — a challenge that steeled him. Forced him to grow.
“He grew tremendously in the pressure of having to win a championship,” Riley says. “You go into survival mode. You put everything in it in order to make sure everything is right. He’s his own man. He’s in control.”
He wasn’t always. The rocky start to that first season of the Big 3 in 2010 found the Heat with a 9-8 record and the dissonant noise growing.
One night during a loss chants were heard in the home crowd to bring back Riley.
“I got up and left my seat when they started the chant,” Riley recalls. “I called a meeting the next morning with LeBron, Wade and Chris and said it’s not going to happen. ‘We’re off to a tough start. You guys get your s--- together. This is your coach down there.’ They never asked me a question. There wasn’t a discussion. ‘Let’s get everyone relaxed. Let’s not listen to the noise.’ I wasn’t gonna get in the way. And [Spoelstra] turned it around real quick.”
Two years ago Spoelstra led the Heat to an unexpected appearance in the NBA Finals, in a bubble, in the middle of the worst of the COVID pandemic.
This season he has Miami leading the East despite an injury-wracked season in which his top three players have missed 61 combined games, with Bam Adebayo out 25 games, Jimmy Butler 19 and Kyle Lowry 17.
The constant shuffling borne of necessity has seen the Heat with 12 players averaging at least 15 minutes per game, 11 with 10-plus starts and 11 averaging 7.5 points or more. Players like Max Strus and Gabe Vincent have stepped up.
Now, with better health and Victor Oladipo back and the playoffs looming ever closer, “Coach is gonna have to get to a rotation,” as Riley puts it.
It is a luxurious problem to have. Meantime all the cobbling Spo has had to do for so much of the season positions him as a contender to finally win his first Coach of the Year honor.
Ask Riley what he likes about Spoelstra as a coach and have a seat. Relax. This could take awhile:
“I remember asking Erik once to put together a bunch of ideas. He gave me a 15-page dissertation of offense and defense and things we were doing. He puts his head down and keeps grinding. His reservoir is so full of knowledge, not from me, but from his experiences. Erik was a formidable force from the beginning. Video coordinator. Advance scout. Assistant coach. And now. X’s and O’s, he knows all that stuff. But there’s also sincerity toward his work. Competence. Reliability.”
Spoelstra has missed two games in 14 years, for the birth of his first son, Santiago, in 2018, and his second, Dante, in 2019.
In surpassing Riley as the Heat’s all-time winningest coach, Spoelstra’s teams are so consistently good it’s easy to take him for granted.
“People are bored with Spo’s greatness,” as the icon Wade puts it. “Right now you’re talking about Coach of the Year. If there’s any year he has shown he can coach his face off, it’s this year.”
Says Adebayo of Spoelstra: “Guys are out unexpectedly, it’s been like that this whole year. Some [coaches] lose their players and it’s like the season is over. His mind-set isn’t like that.”
Reel back 16 years ago, with Spoelstra unexpectedly in front of the team for the first first time ever, and Riley having to interrupt him to say, “Speak up so we can hear you!”
He spoke up. He found his voice. He is heard.
Erik Spoelstra doesn’t have a chance to become one of the best ever at what he does.
He already is.
This story was originally published March 11, 2022 at 4:48 PM.
