BUSINESS CASUAL
Spoelstra without his tie and ties that define game nights
The new normal for the Miami Heat comes with less of a buttoned-down approach and decidedly less face time.
As he approached the Heat’s schedule of scrimmages, which continues Saturday against the Utah Jazz in the NBA’s quarantine setting at Disney World, Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said much is different when it comes to both looking in the mirror and looking for reassuring words.
For example, recall that before Game 6 of the 2006 NBA Finals, with his team up 3-2 on the Dallas Mavericks, Heat President Pat Riley,
who then was coaching, demanded his team limit their packing to “one suit, one shirt, one tie,” insisting the job be finished the next game (as it indeed was).
For Spoelstra, the game settings in the absence of fans at the Wide World of Sports complex requires even less.
No, he did not pack a tie. “I did not,” he said, with the league allowing for casual wear in the summer setting created by the coronavirus pandemic.
That had Spoelstra coaching Wednesday’s scrimmage victory over the Sacramento Kings in a Heat polo.
“I look at it like not summer league, but more like international basketball, the attire for those tournaments,” Spoelstra said. “We had already addressed it as a coaches association that we’re not going to wear suits and ties. So I did not bring any of that.
“I just basically brought what you’re seeing right now, just different variations of Miami Heat gear.”
For years, such dressing down has been the approach during the Olympics and other out-of-season competitions. But Spoelstra said he appreciates an eventual return to the sartorial stylings that Riley and late former Detroit Pistons coach Chuck Daly delivered to the NBA.
“I haven’t given that any thought,” Spoelstra said of how dressing the part became an NBA institution. “I don’t know where it started.
“I’m not a historian on that either. But we could probably point to my boss, and Chuck Daly took it to a different level, just in terms of the great class and style to the sideline.”
The other new normal for Spoelstra is the relative isolation of the moment, with the Heat limited to a 37-person traveling party. The means no direct face time with Riley at Disney, nor the comfort of a postgame decompress with former Heat coach and Spoelstra assistant Ron Rothstein, who is a Heat radio and television analyst.
“Pat and I would always connect on game day,” Spoelstra said. “And we’ll still be able to do that, via text or phone or FaceTime. But that obviously is a little bit different.
“And at home, every time, usually right after my media session, Coach Rothstein would come in my office and we would just hang out for 20 minutes, 30 minutes. And that’s been our ritual every game since he’s moved off of my bench. We still kept our same ritual of connecting at home.
“I’m going to miss both of those interactions.”