Heat's Glass makes mark in summer
Team’s video room graduates another ‘more than ready’ coach.
Miami Heat assistant coach Eric Glass
LAS VEGAS — has one directive from his boss, coach Erik Spoelstra, when it comes to summer league.
“He said, ‘Do whatever you want and don’t be afraid to make a mistake,’ which was huge for me,”
Glass said. “He gave me incredible trust and leeway.” Glass is leading Miami through two summer leagues. He won two of three games in Sacramento, Calif., before moving on to Las Vegas, where the Heat opened play Saturday against New Orleans.
Glass, 34, is the latest in a line of Heat coaches who got their start in the video room, eventually moved to the bench and then began to make their bones in summer league. After spending thousands of hours in the video room and the last two years as the Heat’s player development coach, Glass is “more than ready” for the challenge, Spoelstra said. “E.G. doesn’t even know how ready he is for this,”
Spoelstra said. “I always compare it to the Karate Kid. Wax on, wax off. You do that a million times
behind the scenes and you have no idea watching all those films and those situations, ATOs, sideline
out of bounds, doing game preps. Doing those 82 times a year, plus playoff and preseason, you’re doing 100 a year-plus for several years. You already have a lot of reps. And he’s already been in front of the team in walkthroughs and shoot-arounds and film sessions.
“Part of stepping forward and coaching is being able to make your decisions, and that’s why I’ve just stepped back.”
Glass joined the organization in 2010 as an intern in the video room. His first coaching experience came with the ninth-grade team at his alma mater, Corona del Mar High in Newport Beach, Calif. He was a student and graduate assistant at Cal State-Fullerton and helped out the staff at UC-Irvine.
Glass’ career received a big boost in 2013 when Spoelstra trusted him with the duties of video coordinator, a position that has been held by a succession of high-profile NBA coaches and executives.
Here are some of the names to come through the Heat’s video room:
Spoelstra, Knicks coach David Fizdale, Hawks general manager Travis Schlenk, former Hawks GM Wes Wilcox, Wizards executive Brett Greenberg, Magic assistant coach Pat Delany, Heat assistant coach Dan Craig and Heat assistant GM Adam Simon.
“It all starts with the head coaches we’ve had,” Glass said. “They’re great coaches, they’re demanding coaches. Everything is kind of coming through the video room.
“It’s like getting a Ph.D. You’re there, you’re the one that’s around when the head coach is around. You’re always the one doing any little edit, any big edit, so you kind of have an insight to what the head coach is thinking, which has been huge for my personal experience.”
Glass’ first experience on the bench with an NBA coach came in the Ukraine, where he served as an assistant under Mike Fratello for two years (2011-13). While the Heat have an old school approach, Glass describes Fratello’s approach as “old, old school.”
“He’s very detailed, very thorough with everything,” Glass said. “I think he brought 10 suitcases. About four of them were notepads and binders from Memphis, from Atlanta. He was up all night, everything was scattered, but when we got to practice he knew everything that was going on.”
Glass later had stints as a summer league assistant coach under Juwan Howard and Chris Quinn. A year ago, Glass took over for one game in Orlando when Quinn was called back to Miami while the Heat were recruiting Gordon Hayward.
“He helped me a ton last year,” Quinn said. “As an assistant, you have a role and you have a lot of responsibilities. As a head coach, that just gets bumped up, the pressures. In summer league, you get three weeks of barely a taste of what it is to be a real head coach.”
When asked about his playing career, Glass says, “I wasn’t any good.” Which is why he decided not to push back his dream of one day being a coach by walking on at a junior college after playing at Corona del Mar.
“I fell in love with it,” Glass said of coaching. “I wanted to give it a shot. I wanted to do it early so I could progress and not try to play a busted career.”
Glass received his undergraduate degree in kinesiology at Cal State-Fullerton before going through the master’s program. Then came his Ph.D. at Miami Heat University, aka The Video Room.
“I think all of us are different personalities,” Glass said. “I’ve taken little pieces from here and there. Ideas. The chalk-talk we throw up on the board in the offseason, if we want to talk about it or we want to look at it, we do it in summer league. Sink- or-swim type deal.”