Spoelstra shrugs off the credit, but praise still comes: ‘Everything you want a coach to be, he is.’
Miami Heat coach Erik Spoelstra is constantly pushing the credit away from himself and onto his players.
But the praise still continues to come in for Spoelstra, especially after the eighth-seeded Heat made big adjustments on both ends of the court to bounce back from a 20point loss in Game 1 and defeat the top-seeded Boston Celtics 111-101 on Wednesday in Game 2 at TD Garden to steal homecourt advantage.
Despite not having starters Jimmy Butler and Terry Rozier because of injuries, the Heat evened the best-of-7 series at 1-1 after entering Game 2 as huge 14.5-point underdogs.
“We’re effusive in our praise of Erik Spoelstra,” NBA analyst Tim Legler said on the All NBA podcast following Game 2. “I’ve said, give me any 10 players, whether it’s at the health club down the street or the Olympic team or any team in the NBA, that’s the guy I would want to coach any 10 players you hand me. That’s how much respect I have for Erik Spoelstra — how smart he is, how passionate he is, he’s energized. Everything you want a coach to be, he is.”
On the offensive end, Spoelstra and his staff implored players to turn up the three-point volume in response to the Celtics’ soft closeouts and defensive game plan to send extra defenders at the
Bam Adebayo-Tyler Herro pick-and-roll. As a result, the Heat shot 23 of 43 (53.5 percent) from three-point range to set a new franchise record for the most three-point makes in a playoff game and outscore the Celtics 69-36 from behind the arc.
On the defensive end, the Heat went away from the blitzing and drop coverage it used in Game 1 and turned to a switching scheme against the Celtics’ high-powered offense. The strategy worked to slow Boston’s usually impressive ball movement and force more one-on-one isolation situations, as the Celtics totaled just 21 assists.
The Celtics, which posted the NBA’s top regularseason record at 64-18, fell to 7-7 this season when finishing with 21 or fewer assists and 1-5 this season when scoring 101 or fewer points.
Not wanting to give away too much information, Herro said the Heat’s switching worked to “slow them down a little bit.” Heat forward Caleb Martin added that the adjustment to switch more “gives them different looks.”
For Celtics center Kristaps Porzingis, the Heat’s defensive adjustments “make us think also.”
“They do this on one possession, then they do another thing on another possession, then they switch, then they don’t,” Porzingis said after the Celtics’ practice in Boston on Thursday. “So that can freeze you a little bit, because you start to think a little bit, then you rush a little bit into the next actions. It’s this game they play. It’s like a game in the game and they’re good at that. So you have to give them credit.”
But Spoelstra doesn’t want any of that credit, noting after Friday’s practice at Kaseya Center that “this is not about scheming to get a win.”
“I’m not out there playing,” said Spoelstra, who is in his 16th season as the Heat’s head coach and signed a new eight-year contract extension earlier this season worth more than $100 million. “It’s a collective competitive spirit. The playoffs are so competitive, the margins for error are so small. There’s a couple hundred plays that need to be made and how many of those can you win as a basketball team. That’s usually what it comes down to are those plays from your most competitive guys.”
The Heat’s most competitive guys, though, know how important Spoelstra is to the team’s success.
“Everyone knows what Spo does at this time of the year,” Herro said. “So we just try to let Spo do him and understand that he knows his adjustments he likes to make from game to game. We just follow his lead. He puts us in the right positions and we just execute.”
STILL THE UNDERDOG
Even after taking homecourt advantage from the Celtics, the Heat knows it’s still a heavy underdog.
“People still doubt us,” Adebayo said. “People still think we’re not going to win the series, people still have their opinions about us. For us, we won one game. It’s still first to four.”
As of Friday afternoon, the Heat stood as 9.5-point home betting underdogs for Game 3 on Saturday (6 p.m., Bally Sports Sun and TNT).
“We do understand that