Despite being considered one of the league’s most brilliant minds, Erik Spoelstra has never won the NBA’s Coach of the Year award. The Miami Heat might just surprise enough people next season for that to change.
This won’t be the case if you ask the folks over at the Worldwide Leader. A panel of ESPN insiders projected the Heat to win fewer than 40 games. Equally notable, the same group did not have any Miami representatives finishing in the top five for one of the major awards. That includes the Coach of the Year category.
None of which comes as a surprise if the expectation is that the Heat will have another losing season. At the same time, now that the bar is set so low, it paves the way for Miami to rise noticeably above it—and for Coach Spo to make franchise history.
Miami has only had one Coach of the Year winner
Pat Riley is the Heat’s only head honcho to bag a Coach of the Year honor, which he picked up for his body of work during the 1996-97 campaign. Winning one of his own would put Spoelstra in even more rarefied air.
Oddly enough, this is an award many would have expected him to already have. For all of the gripes Heat fans may have about some of his lineup tendencies, Spoelstra is regularly ranked as the best coach in the Association, bar none. Entering last season, CBS Sports not only had him in the No. 1 slot, but he finished inside his own tier.
Yet, Spoelstra has never landed higher than second on a Coach of the Year ballot. And he’s done that only twice.
This could be Erik Spoelstra’s best shot in a while
Voters tend to gravitate towards three kinds of candidates for this honor: Coaches taking the reins of a good team they turn into an even better one; entrenched names whose squads take a leap after acquiring marquee talent and/or getting a ton of internal development; and those captaining a roster that obliterates preseason expectations.
Spoelstra and the Heat fall firmly into that last bucket. ESPN’s summer forecasts are proof of how many are writing them off as a relative non-threat. Even the league itself has earmarked them for mediocrity. Look no further than how few nationally televised games they will play this season (five).
Consensus feels like it’s veering too far into overly pessimistic waters. Norman Powell was acquired for a song, and will address one of the team’s most glaring issues: floor-spacing and perimeter rim pressure. The front office has also quietly cobbled together a rotation that could stretch more than 10 capable players deep.
Sure, the risk of over-taxing franchise big man Bam Adebayo is real. And yes, Miami could still use a primary playmaker to drive the offense. Even if it believes Kasparas Jakucionis will eventually be up to the task, he isn’t hitting that peak off-rip.
Assuming they get relatively favorable health, though, the Heat are built to claw their way up the Eastern Conference ladder. Aside from the Cleveland Cavaliers, New York Knicks, and Orlando Magic, the landscape is littered with question marks. People may prefer the Milwaukee Bucks, Atlanta Hawks, or Philadelphia 76ers to Miami. But finishing ahead of them all is far from outside the realm of possibility.
In the event the Heat do just that, they’ll stake their claim as the NBA’s biggest surprise. And Spoelstra, in turn, may have his strongest Coach of the Year case yet.
