China wins gold medal in the figure skating pairs

China’s Sui Wenjing and Han Cong captured the gold that eluded them by a razor-thin margin four years ago, this time winning the pairs figure skating program by nearly as narrow an edge at the Beijing Games.

The two-time world champions, buoyed by the support of a carefully selected crowd of Chinese supporters, scored a worldrecord 239.88 points to edge Russia’s Evgenia Tarasova and Vladimir Morozov by 63 hundredths of a point. Sui and Han had to settle for silver in Pyeongchang by 43 hundredths of a point.

China got its ninth gold medal at these Games, nearly double its previous Winter Olympics best of five.

Bobsled: Laura Nolte and Mariama Jamanka added to Germany’s record haul of Olympic sliding medals, while Elana Meyers Taylor of the U.S. extended her medal record with a bronze. Nolte drove to gold and Jamanka won the silver, pushing Germany to eight gold medals in nine sliding events in Beijing. That’s more than any nation has ever won in sliding at any Olympics. Meyers Taylor, in possibly her last race, grabbed the bronze for the fifth medal of her Olympic career. That’s more than any

Black athlete in Winter Olympic history. It’s also the most by any women’s bobsledder and two more than any other Olympic bobsledder, male or female, has won for the U.S.

Cross-country skiing: Alexander Bolshunov sprinted to his third Olympic gold medal, winning a 30-kilometer mass start cross-country ski race that was rescheduled and shortened because of strong wind and frigid temperatures. Russian teammate Ivan Yakimushkin won silver, and Simen Hegstad Krueger of Norway took bronze.

Men’s curling: Four years after losing in the Pyeongchang final to American upstart John Shuster, Niklas Edin led Sweden to the gold medal, beating Britain 5-4 in the first extra-end men’s final in Olympic history. With the medal podium already set up, and Canada standing by to collect the bronze it won Friday by ending the Americans’ repeat hopes, Edin took advantage of the last-rock advantage in the first tiebreaker end and put his penultimate stone into the center of the target area.

Women's curling: Sweden defeated Switzerland 9-7 to win the bronze medal. It was the fifth straight Olympic medal for the Swedes. They won gold in 2018, 2010 and 2006 and silver in 2014. Switzerland has not medaled since finishing second at the Turin Games in 2006.

Men’s hockey: Slovakia won its first Olympic hockey medal in the nation’s history, defeating Sweden 4-0 to win the bronze. Juraj Slafkovsky scored two goals for Slovakia. Slafkovsky at 17 is the youngest player in the tournament and leads all scorers with seven goals.

Speedskating: Bart Swings of Belgium captured the gold medal in the final men’s speedskating event of the Beijing Olympics, the mass start. … Irene Schouten of the Netherlands won her third gold medal of the Beijing Olympics, outsprinting Canada’s Ivanie Blondin to win the women’s mass start.

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you’re talking about

Coach of the Year,” said retired Heat legend Dwyane Wade, who spent most of his NBA career with Spoelstra as his head coach. “We’ve said it multiple times, but if there’s any year that he has shown that he can coach his face off, it’s this year.”

Spoelstra, 51, has been a Coach of the Year candidate multiple times but has never earned the honor.

Spoelstra is again a contender for the award this season. Not only does the Heat enter the break with one of the NBA’s best records, but it’s also one of only two teams with both a top-eight offensive rating and defensive rating this season, along with the Phoenix Suns.

The Heat has accomplished that despite facing a long list of injuries and COVID-19 issues along the way. The leading trio of Bam Adebayo, Butler and Kyle Lowry has played together in only 21 of Miami’s 59 games this season.

“I think he should definitely get Coach of the Year,” Adebayo said. “I feel like he has been in one of those places this year where guys are out unexpectedly, guys come in unexpectedly, guys come out randomly. It has been like that this whole year. For him to still manage and still have the right mind-set to try to win instead of some people, I guess, they lose their players and they’re like the season is over. His mindset isn’t like that.”

When Adebayo missed seven weeks because of a thumb injury from December to mid-January, the Heat managed to post a 14-8 record. In games played without Adebayo and Butler this season, Miami is somehow 11-4.

“I knew this a little bit about him already, but this kind of solidified it,” Heat guard Tyler Herro said of Spoelstra. “He enjoys coaching teams when we don’t have all of our guys. He [would] rather coach the guys on twoways and the guys that aren’t in the rotation normally. He likes coaching in those games more.”

Spoelstra has run through 16 different starting lineups and various bench rotations to find the right combinations while key players have been out.

One of the Heat’s most impressive shorthanded wins this season came on Dec. 15 against the Philadelphia 76ers. Without its top three scorers in Adebayo, Butler and Herro, the Heat still found a way to escape with a 101-96 road win behind a thencareer-high 26 points from Gabe Vincent.

Heat forward Duncan

Robinson has noticed that Spoelstra “definitely shows up with a different level of fire in those games, when we got like eight, nine guys.”

“Spo has been around for a while. He has seen a lot of different games, different environments,” Vincent added. “It’s rare you get a new challenge that he hasn’t seen before. So when you encounter those kind of games, he loves the competition of it. We love competition around here. It’s part of our DNA and it brings out the best of all of us. I think in those moments, we get the best out of him, as well.”

CONSISTENTLY EVOLVING

This isn’t a one-year phenomenon for Spoelstra. He’s the secondlongest active tenured NBA head coach with one team, trailing only San Antonio’s Gregg Popovich.

During Spoelstra’s 14 seasons as head coach, he has led the Heat to five NBA Finals appearances and two championships in 2012 and 2013 with the help of LeBron James, Chris Bosh and Wade. Spoelstra has also already established himself as the winningest coach in franchise history with 645 regular-season wins and 85 playoff wins.

Since Spoelstra took over in 2008 at 37 years old, the Heat holds the second-highest winning percentage in the NBA behind only the Spurs.

Heat president Pat Riley, who held nearly all of the Heat’s coaching records before Spoelstra, remembers when he first realized Spoelstra had the qualities to become an NBA head coach. Spoelstra spent 13 years with the Heat before he was promoted to head coach, as he was initially hired in 1995 as a video coordinator before eventually becoming an assistant coach under Riley.

“I can recall the first time that he knocked on my door when I was coaching,” Riley said. “That was back probably prior to the first championship [in 2006]. But he knocked on my door, gave me like a 15-page synopsis on scouting, on what he could do, on video, on our offense and defense. It just sort of hit me right in the face that this kid is a pretty knowledgeable, talented, committed person. If you fast-forward 20 years from that time, that’s who he is. He does tremendous research on things, a lot of reading. He knows he doesn’t really know it all.”

As part of his offseason self-improvement process, Spoelstra meets with different coaches from various sports. In 2019, he met with Nova Southeastern University coach Jim Crutchfield to talk about how he ran his prolific offensive system and player development program.

Spoelstra has also set up offseason meetings with coaches such as Chip Kelly, Mike Krzyzewski, John Calipari and Tom Crean. His 2011 meeting with Kelly helped lead to the pace-and-space offense that fueled the Heat’s two championships during the Big 3 era.

“Every year, Spo is different,” said Udonis Haslem, who is the only player who has been with Spoelstra for his entire tenure as the Heat’s head coach. “I think every year he really takes the time to evolve, tap into what he can do better. I think a lot of coaches, they might not do that. They win a couple championships, they have a successful season and they just come back and run it back and do the same thing all over again. I think Spo really takes time to reflect and try to evolve and try to better himself.”

It’s that willingness to continue to evolve and grow combined with his relentless day-to-day consistency that players believe sets Spoelstra apart.

“Spo has been as consistent as any coach,” Wade said. “I’m talking about even down to a cold, he doesn’t even miss games for a cold. It’s a lot of things over the years. I’m like, ‘Damn, Spo. You don’t get sick? You don’t want to miss practice or nothing?’ ”

Spoelstra has missed only two games during his time as the Heat’s head coach — one in 2018 for the birth of his first son, Santiago, and one in 2019 for the birth of his second son, Dante.

“It may get boring. Spo is going to give you the same answers over and over and over and over,” Wade said. “But that’s him and he doesn’t defer away from it. It doesn’t matter if you’re on a 27game winning streak or you’re on a five-game losing streak. Spo is going to be consistent to what he and the organization has come to know breeds success.

“As a player, you’ll be like, ‘Can you give me something new?’ Just like the media. ‘Don’t hit me with Spoisms, give me something new today.’ But we can appreciate how he makes sure we never got too high and never got too low.”

Wade has been retired for nearly three years. But current Heat players confirm that Spoelstra’s consistency is unwavering.

“He has been the staple with everyone else missing time,” Robinson said. “People have been out of the lineup and he has remained that consistent voice and that consistent presence, and really has maintained consistency with his messaging, as well. We don’t come in after a loss and try to change things up or reinvent the wheel. It’s more about how can we be who we are but do it better. I think that just helps calm the waters a little bit.”

Riley describes Spoelstra as “mindful.”

“I think that’s the word, probably,” Riley said. “He uses it a lot and I used to use it a lot about the present moment. Being very mindful about where you are today right at the present moment. While you can look back for experience and remember things that you did that went wrong or the things that you did that went right in all areas of coaching, the fact that he’s so present moment-oriented is one of the reasons why he can keep himself grounded. He lets things go. You got to and you just dream about the future.”

Of course, there’s also the X’s and O’s aspect of coaching that Spoelstra excels at. In Thursday’s double-overtime win over the Charlotte Hornets before the break, Spoelstra brought back an ATO (after time out) play that has worked in the past and it worked again to free Lowry for a layup to put the Heat ahead by four with 21.1 seconds left in the second overtime.

“I remember when I first got here and saw him doing it with a Sharpie. I was like, ‘Wow.’ I had never seen that before,” Vincent said of Spoelstra’s ATOs. “That’s different. His ATOs, he’ll draw something up. When I first got here, I was blown away. I still get amazed sometimes and say, ‘That was a damn good play.’ ”

RILEY’S INFLUENCE

Spoelstra is considered of the NBA’s best coaches now. But when he took over as the Heat’s head coach, he was trying to find his own voice and style in Riley’s shadow.

While the principles that Riley established during his 11 seasons as the

Heat’s head coach remain, Spoelstra has created his own identity over the years. Former Heat players who played for Riley and Spoelstra notice the similarities between the two from the phrases they use to the way they teach the game, but they can also quickly spot the differences.

“You can call Spo ‘Pat Jr.’ He has the same ideals,” Wade said. “They have the same thought of how it should be done. Then you put your own spin and your own take to it. So when Spo first became head coach, you could tell he was trying to do it the Pat Riley way. Then he found the Spo way. In terms of these are the pillars, these are the rules, this is what we are as an organization, he hasn’t changed that. But he has actually put his own seasoning into his dish and it has been special to see Spo grow into his chef and not do exactly what the chef before him did. He has now found his own ingredients.”

Riley, 76, noticed how much Spoelstra tried to emulate him early on. He has also noticed how different Spoelstra is now.

“I think in the beginning, he took a lot of what I did and maybe a little bit of who I was,” said Riley, who was also named one of the 15 greatest coaches in NBA history. “We all do it. It’s OK to model yourself after somebody. But I think Spo, over the years, probably took whatever he could from me and exhausted that. And while he was improving as a coach and a man and became a father and all those things, he has his own philosophy now. He really does.

“He has changed with the times in a way that was important for the players to see that he would change with whatever the times were in the NBA when it comes to rules, when it comes to players, when it comes to the playoffs, when it comes to practices, when it comes to all of the things that create tremendous anxiety and pressure, he organically changed for the better for himself. I think he’s a lot different now than he was when he started, and that’s good. He’s definitely a lot different than I was because I don’t know if I ever changed in my 25 years of coaching.”

Wade put it this way: “It has just been dope to watch him go from being that young head coach that was trying to fill the shoes of his idol to now where he is, where he’s his own man and he has created his own path. Spo has taken what Pat Riley did in Miami and has taken it to even another level. It’s beautiful to see.”

Sunday’s All-Star Game will mark the second Spoelstra has coached in. Riley coached in nine.

Spoelstra ranks 24th among NBA coaches on the all-time wins list. Riley ranks fifth.

Spoelstra has never been named the Coach of the Year. Riley earned the award three times.

“I hated it,” Riley said when asked about his Coach of the Year memories. “It wasn’t that I wasn’t honored by it. I felt uncomfortable being that in front of the players that I coached and I was getting the benefit because I was coaching great players in great cities. It was uncomfortable for me, just as it would be for Erik. But it’s going to happen. One day it’s going to happen and he’s going to have to accept that award. He can give it to one of his children, they can put it up there and they can look at it.”

Spoelstra will spend All-Star Weekend with his wife, Nikki, and their two sons in Cleveland. He’ll be asked about the Heat’s success this season and he’ll handle it like Riley handled the Coach of the Year award.

Spoelstra will compliment his staff and players, and deflect much of the credit away from himself as he has done for the past 14 years. For as much as he has grown, that part of his coaching style remains unchanged.

“The recognition is going to continue to come to Spo,” Riley said. “But I think he’ll continue to handle it the way that he has, which I think players respect him not always out there grabbing the limelight. He takes care of these guys extremely well in a lot of different ways that I don’t even think they understand.”

Anthony Chiang: 305-376-4991, @Anthony_Chiang