Miami Heat: It Doesn’t Matter If Erik Spoelstra Is Coach Of The Year

Erik Spoelstra of the Miami Heat is one of the favorites for the Coach Of The Year award, but in the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t matter if he doesn’t win.

When the Coach of the Year award is being discussed, many writers have their own criteria for selecting the honor. Some simply give it to the man who leads his team to the best record, while others prefer to give it to someone who does a lot with a very limited group of players.

Over the past couple of weeks, one man who has been touted to the win the award is Miami Heat head coach Erik Spoelstra.

Spoelstra has a very unfashionable group of players on the verge of a playoff spot and if Dion Waiters wasn’t injured, then they would probably be a shoo-in for the sixth or seventh seed.

My fellow scribe Eric Spyropoulos has Spoelstra third in his power rankings, behind Scott Brooks of the Wizards and Mike D’Antoni of the Rockets.

While I personally would always give the award to the person who does the most with the least, Spoelstra is unlikely to win the award, as voters often prefer coaches who have won at least 50 games. Spoelstra will not reach that mark this year with the Miami Heat.

Some Heat fans will likely be up in arms if he does not win the award, but I am of the opinion that it doesn’t really matter.

The Heat culture is not about winning individual awards, it is about team spirit and team unity and this is the major reason that the Heat have been better than the sum of their parts this year.

Spoelstra is rightfully getting a lot of credit this year as the Heat have had the second-most games lost to injury this season, per mangameslost.com, and he has a roster stocked with former D-Leaguers and former misfits on one year “prove-it” type contracts.

The Heat run a three-point happy offense and the good spacing has meant that inexperienced players haven’t had to come in and do things that are beyond them at the early point of their careers.

Miami Heat

One of the best parts of the Heat is that players are unselfish, seldom force stupid shots and they look for the extra pass. To put this into perspective, James Johnson and Waiters are posting career highs in assists after having reputations as ball-hog type players early in their careers.

The Miami Heat organization preaches unselfishness on and off the court and that is why Spoelstra not winning the Coach of the Year won’t matter to him or Pat Riley in the grand scheme of things.

Spoelstra isn’t a man with an ego, he is a man who has gone quietly about his business for the last decade.

To me, the idea that Spoelstra has suddenly elevated his coaching this year is quite insulting. Spoelstra has always been a meticulous planner and one of the more creative coaches in the League and this standard of coaching isn’t something that is new.

This view is echoed by Dave Hyde of the Sun Sentinel, who believes that the idea that Spoelstra has suddenly changed as a coach is wholly flawed.

Spoelstra’s major achievement this season, regardless of whether he wins Coach of the Year or not, is that he has completely rebuilt Miami Heat basketball. At 11-30, his doubters, and those who criticized the decision to let Dwyane Wade walk, felt a sense of validation.

Just two months later, those doubters have been made to look so wrong.

With Wade gone, Spoelstra has switched to an offense with more ball movement and more outside shooting and this will now be the future of the Miami Heat.

Spoelstra does not need some award in order to validate his achievements, as he has coached at an elite level for a long time, but he has also edited the offense and established blueprints that will help the Heat thrive for the next decade.

Spoelstra’s selfless attitude and dedication to winning has rubbed off on the whole roster, most notably Hassan Whiteside. At times last year, the former Kings prospect was often criticized for chasing blocks as opposed to just playing for the team.

Jeremias Engelmann commented that Whiteside didn’t help his teammates with his selfish style of play and came to the conclusion that Whiteside was an overrated player.

Even though I don’t agree with this conclusion, it was clear that Whiteside wasn’t always doing what was best for the team. However, he has been a different player this year, and the Heat are now better off when he is on the court.

In a recent interview, Whiteside commented that the “winning result” is all that he cares about, and this shows how far he has come under Spoelstra’s coaching style.

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Spoelstra winning Coach of the Year would just be a bonus for him, because his work as the Miami Heat head coach is maximizing players and making them play their best basketball.

Everyone has bought into his system on both ends of the floor and this is more important than winning an award that doesn’t exactly inspire creative thinking from voters.

One of the downsides of signing players to one-year contracts is that they don’t often buy into the team, as they are just trying to earn themselves a payday, but Spoelstra has got a bunch of misfit veterans to play team basketball.

This is so important for the franchise in terms of attracting new free agents, as people will look at the production of relatively mediocre players in Spoelstra’s system, and want a piece of the action.

Miami would have still been an attractive free-agent destination if the team had finished in last place in the East, but because of Spoelstra’s fine work, the franchise is well equipped to make big pitches to the likes of Blake Griffin, Chris Paul and Paul Millsap this summer.

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This is more important than Spoelstra winning an individual award and he will most probably see it that way too.