As the NBA deals with a worldwide coronavirus crisis that has halted the league’s season for nearly two months, Miami Heat coach Erik Spoelstra was non-committal on Wednesday night about when the organization would open AmericanAirlines Arena doors to players in the days ahead under strict NBA rules.
Speaking for nearly an hour with TNT’s Ernie Johnson on the NBA’s Twitter feed, Spoelstra said he expected a “soft opening of our facility at some point soon” and that the team is in communication with local government and the league “about how to do that where it is the most safe way where we can follow all the protocols and keep everyone involved safe and healthy, not only the players, but the staff, support staff.”
The NBA is targeting Friday as a potential date to reopen team practice facilities in cities and states where local governments have loosened stay-at-home orders amid the COVID-19 pandemic. But the Heat does not plan to allow players to start working out at AmericanAirlines Arena until Monday at the earliest, a league source said.
The NBA’s reopening of arena facilities will come with strict restrictions, including no more than four players in the arena at any one time, each working only in individual sessions and participants encouraged to social distance at least 12 feet apart at all times.
According to Marc Stein from the New York Times, at least three teams are preparing to open their practice facilities for voluntary individual workouts on Friday, the NBA’s target date to start allowing use of team facilities — the Cleveland Cavaliers, Denver Nuggets and Portland Trail Blazers.
The Houston Rockets are among the NBA teams that can open their practice facility Friday, but a team spokeswoman told the New York Times that the Rockets plan to wait until May 18 — in accordance with Texas Gov. Greg Abbott allowing gyms to re-open statewide that day.
“We’re keeping consistent communication with our team and our guys,” Spoelstra said. “We’re the Miami Heat. We know how to work, how to grind. But this is not about that. It’s not about competition. It’s bigger than basketball. Our communication with our players and daily Zoom workouts are more about connection, having some laughs, having guys on some daily routines.
“They’re not meetings. These are all optional. Not everyone does it every single day. We’re taking that approach. I don’t even know if it’s the right approach. We’re all feeling our way. We meet two or three times as a staff, sometimes to talk about the team and sometimes to catch up and tell stories about what’s going on in each other’s households.”
Spoelstra addressed other topics in a wide-ranging interview with Johnson:
— He said this week marks his 25th anniversary with the Heat after joining the team as an intern to help with the 1995 draft.
Pat Riley was hired as Heat coach and president that summer and Spoelstra said “the only reason I survived that turnover was it was September, and they just needed somebody to cut tape” and didn’t want to train someone from the outside.
“I had a one-year leeway to prove myself,” he said. “Twenty-five years later, they haven’t found a way to get rid of me.”
— How did Riley tell him he was being promoted to head coach in 2008?
“It would be like you imagined, a Godfather scene,” Spoelstra said. “He brought me in on a Saturday, after we won 15 games. … The lights were down. I sat on the other side of the desk. I could barely make out his face; he could see me.
“He said, ‘I’m done. You’re ready for it. This will be like you’re in a bird’s nest and I’m going to push you off the branch and you are going to have to figure out how to fly. You have enough experience, you’ve worked for great people. This is happening. Take a couple days to get your S-H-I-T together and Monday is the press conference.’”
— Asked if LeBron James bumped him intentionally in that frequently-replayed video clip from the team’s 17th game in November 2010, the first year of the Big Era era, Spoelstra said: “No. I don’t think so. When you’re on teams like that, they naturally get micro-analyzed. We were 9-8 after that game, it exploded in the media. After that, we went on a run, winning 21 out of 22.”
He said in the weeks that followed that 9-8 start, he and James “would walk by each other in the hallways and collide into each other and we would laugh.”
— Though Riley revealed in his book that James asked him early in that 2010-11 season if he ever had the itch to coach again, Spoelstra said Riley “didn’t tell me” at the time.
“Pat hates it when I say it,” Spoelstra said. “If I worked for a different organization and president, I would have been fired three or four different times. Pat just stays the course. He gets more resolved … when people force him to do something. That’s how his personality is.”
The Heat, of course, lost to Dallas in the NBA Finals during the first season of the Big 3 era. That second season, “we came to training camp and it was the same group. We added Shane Battier and drafted Norris Cole and Pat was basically saying you guys figure it.”
— Spoelstra’s wife Nikki was a Heat dancer at one point before they were married, and Johnson asked if Spoelstra happened to notice her during a timeout.
Spoelstra said no, explaining: “We used to do clinics around the city, and you would usually be accompanied by three or four dancers … and Burnie the mascot. We got to know each other and a great relationship blossomed from that.”
— On how he feels about turning 50 this coming November: “Gratitude for how fortunate I’ve been in this profession. I find great purpose in being a steward, caretaker, of this culture.”
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