Spoelstra is the true believer, who took the good and worthwhile tenants from the conditioning test and body fat measuring bullshit and turned it into a religion of sacrifice, one that he doesn’t just demand from his players, but himself. He was both a preening, armani suit-wearing, hair-slicked primadonna on the sideline soaking up credit, and an iron fisted dictator that demanded everything from his teams and gave back nothing. ![]() ![]() Riley’s iteration of “Heat Culture”, which dates back to the ‘80s Lakers team that eventually got sick of and quit on him, was about Riley first, as any early to mid ‘90s Knicks fan can attest. It’s even further out than Pat Riley’s ancestral steel town of Schenectady, which is apropos, as Spoelstra is the disciple who was forged in his mentor’s image and taken his philosophy to its platonic extreme. In other words, it’s the 28-year tenured employee of the Miami Heat, Erik Spoelstra.Ĭoach Spo is appropriately a product of the arctic, remote barrens of upstate, northwestern New York, in Buffalo. The most potent cocktail of bench leadership is the philosopher with no ego, the architect who can mark up blueprints on the fly, the sandwich artist who respects dietary restrictions and can add ingredients on demand. If you’re a kind of malleable, “players coach”, with no fixed ideology or approach to the game, you might end up under performing with a talented squad and getting let go by the Philadelphia 76ers. If you’re too dogmatic, you live and die by the same double-edged sword. It’s a paradox that demands being able to hold two things in your head at the same time, to understand two conflicting ideas can be true. ![]() If you forced me to define what I think makes a good coach in this modern league, my answer would be “Rigid flexibility”.
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