Nothing ‘non-essential’ to coach about restart, which he calls ‘purest form of competition’
The decisions at the end of training camp are difficult enough, with Erik Spoelstra having to inform three or four players they have not made the team.
What is next for the Miami Heat coach could potentially come with greater anguish.
As part of the NBA’s plan to resume the league in a quarantine-like setting is limiting team traveling parties, including players and coaches, to an estimated 35 or so when competition resumes in the absence of fans at the Wide World of Sports complex on the Disney World campus just outside of Orlando.
Already, the league is debating whether players on two-way contracts will be included, which for the Heat could limit the development of guard Gabe Vincent and forward Kyle Alexander. Beyond that, there figure to be difficult decisions with support staff.
“The only thing I’ll say about that is I don’t want to term anything ‘essential’ or ‘non-essential’ staff,”
Spoelstra said, limited in his allowable comments, with the NBA’s plan yet to be finalized. “That’s not fair to any of our staff members. These are extreme circumstances. We will plan and act accordingly when we get to that point.”
That decision will come when the Heat move from training at AmericanAirlines Arena into the “bubble” type of setting at Disney in early July, as the NBA attempts to complete the season amid the new coronavirus pandemic.
With the NBA projecting the season’s resumption will run from July 31 to a potential Oct. 12 Game 7 of the NBA Finals, it could leave the team separated from Heat president Pat Riley for months.
At 75, Riley stands in a high-risk category of contracting COVID-19.
“I’m not even going to go through any of those kind of things,” Spoelstra said of working in the absence of his mentor. “I haven’t even gotten to any kind of point to who’s going and who’s not going yet.”
By the time the Heat regroup as a team at the end of the month, it will be similar to the break between seasons.
The Heat last played March 11, without a practice session since.
“It will be different,” Spoelstra said. “It will not be like a normal end-ofSeptember training camp, where you have your preseason and gear up for the regular season and get prepared for an eight-month marathon. That is physically, mentally and emotionally different than this preparation.
“This will be much more of a sprint prep and you’ll have to fast track. Thankfully, we have a group that had a lot of built-in chemistry and enjoyed playing with each other. A lot of the nuances of our success were not necessarily X’s and O’s, it was the ability of the guys to read and react off of each other and bring the best off of each other.”
That, Spoelstra said, is heartening.
“I don’t think that goes away with 21⁄2 , three months off and away from each other,” he said. “I think we’ll be able to build off that quickly again. But we’ll have to have a different preparation and a different timeline, certainly.”
The NBA plan is an eight-game schedule of regular-season games, or what the league is now calling “seeding” games, followed by four rounds of traditional best-of-seven playoff series. The difference is that the seeding games will not include the teams with the league’s eight-worst records, whose seasons have been declared complete.
“These will not be preseason games. These will not be games against teams that are not playing for anything. These will be the very playoff teams that we hope to be facing two weeks later,” Spoelstra said. “I think, in many ways, it’s the purest form of competition.
“It’s just going to be about basketball, competition, which team can perform at a higher level than the other team and do it without the other motivations or potential energy from a fan base.”