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Heat coach Erik Spoelstra stands alongside two of his biggest basketball influences, Pat Riley and Rick Adelman ahead of Game 2 of the 2023 NBA Finals.<\/p>\n
Courtesy of Erik Spoelstra<\/p>\n
The impact Miami Heat president Pat Riley has had on Heat head coach Erik Spoelstra is well-documented. But it\u2019s another Hall of Famer who drew Spoelstra into coaching.<\/p>\n
Rick Adelman, a Basketball Hall of Fame inductee who played seven NBA seasons before becoming one of the sport\u2019s all-time winningest coaches, was Spoelstra\u2019s first coaching role model.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe became the reason why I decided to pursue the profession of coaching,\u201d said Spoelstra, who grew up in Portland while Adelman was having success as the Portland Trail Blazers\u2019 head coach.<\/p>\n
The National Basketball Coaches Association announced Adelman\u2019s death on Monday. Adelman died at 79, but not before leaving his mark on the NBA and becoming one of Spoelstra\u2019s biggest basketball influences.<\/p>\n
Spoelstra\u2019s connection to Adelman is even stronger because he grew up around the Adelman family. With Spoelstra\u2019s father, Jon Spoelstra, serving as a Trail Blazers executive while Adelman was a Trail Blazers coach, their families were together a lot in the 1980s.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe organizations were much different in the \u201880s, they were so much smaller,\u201d Spoelstra said to the Miami Herald in the wake of Adelman\u2019s passing. \u201cAnd so, the Adleman kids and the Spoelstra kids were the ones that were running around at all the games and the functions, and during the summer during the functions. I got to know their family really well.\u201d<\/p>\n
As a teenager, Spoelstra would often find himself in Adelman\u2019s home office during gatherings at the Adelmans\u2019 Bull Mountain home in the Portland area. Spoelstra would sometimes sit in that office for hours scouring through the different VHS tapes and scouting reports that filled the room.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was just in awe of the basketball intel that was in that office,\u201d said Spoelstra, who has established himself as one of the top coaches in the NBA and is already the winningest head coach in Heat history in both the regular season and playoffs. \u201cI would just sit in there sometimes for a couple of hours just looking at all the videos and looking at scouting reports and looking at his personal notes on reflections after games and just incredible information. And I look back on it now and just I look back on those times so fondly. Those were some of the best days during the summer. … It was basketball heaven there.\u201d<\/p>\n
Spoelstra wasn\u2019t the only future basketball coach who would sit in Adelman\u2019s office during that time. Three of Adelman\u2019s children ended up having a career in basketball.<\/p>\n
David Adelman, Adelman\u2019s youngest son, is currently the head coach of the Denver Nuggets. Kathy, the oldest daughter, became a successful high school girls coach in Portland. R.J., the oldest son, became the Minnesota Timberwolves\u2019 director of player personnel after serving as an assistant under Adelman with the Houston Rockets before R.J. died in 2018.<\/p>\n
\u201cR.J. would have been a longtime NBA executive. And Kathy may be the most talented coach out of all of us,\u201d Spoelstra said after recently completing his 18th season as the Heat\u2019s head coach. \u201c… And David just had the exposure that was 10 times what we all had because he had it when he was 6 years old. He was always hanging around R.J. and Kathy, and he was always at his dad\u2019s side. He was a ball boy forever. He was always in the locker rooms. So he just understood basketball culture from an early age. David was probably 10, 12 years old. And he was the one that would say, \u2018Hey, look at this edit,\u2019 or, \u2018look at this report.\u2019 So he\u2019s become a brilliant basketball mind.\u201d<\/p>\n
Adelman ranks 10th on the NBA\u2019s all-time wins list for head coaches. He took the Trail Blazers to the NBA Finals twice and also spent time as the head coach for the Sacramento Kings, Rockets, Timberwolves and Golden State Warriors.<\/p>\n
The only coaches who coached more games and had a better winning percentage than Adelman in NBA history were Riley, Gregg Popovich, Jerry Sloan and George Karl.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was able to do things in this profession with such success and humility and grace and high character,\u201d Spoelstra continued on Adelman. \u201cReally understated. But you knew who the coach was at every place he\u2019s been. He\u2019s a Hall of Famer, but I think he\u2019s still underrated in terms of how brilliant he was as a basketball mind. And he always had great defensive teams, but his offensive brilliance as a basketball coach stood out to me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Spoelstra added that \u201ceverybody in the league\u201d has a package of offensive plays that have Adelman\u2019s fingerprints on it \u2014 sets that have a big man playing out of the elbow in a triple-threat position (able to shoot, pass or dribble).<\/p>\n
\u201cEverything you see right now with [Nikola] Jokic playing out of the elbow, top of the floor. They\u2019re all shades of what [Adelman] did decades ago in Sacramento,\u201d Spoelstra said. \u201cAnd every single team, including us, has a package of plays where you run out of the elbow set. And there are different options out of that. But all four teams in the conference finals have a version of that. And, yeah, Rick is the godfather of that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Spoelstra then recalled what he labeled as \u201cone of my favorite moments of my career,\u201d when he was able to be part of a conversation that involved both Adelman and Riley. With Adelman receiving the 2023 Chuck Daly Lifetime Achievement Award ahead of Game 2 of the 2023 NBA Finals between the Heat and Nuggets in Denver, Spoelstra was able to catch up with Adelman.<\/p>\n
\u201cThen Pat was walking by. So Pat came over and said hello,\u201d Spoelstra said. \u201cAnd they talked and reminisced for a few minutes. And then I was able to take a photo with the two of them. It would have been a perfect photo if my dad was in there. But in terms of this profession of the two people that have had the biggest impact on me, that was one of my favorite moments was to get that picture.\u201d<\/p>\n
Adelman was Spoelstra\u2019s coaching role model before Spoelstra even entered the profession. Then Riley became the coach Spoelstra looked up to when Spoelstra was hired by the Heat as the video coordinator in 1995.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re titans in the profession. They are,\u201d Spoelstra said of Adelman and Riley. \u201cMaybe the greatest compliment for any of us, if you could fall somewhere where you take pieces of each of them. The stories have been told about how much Pat has been an influence on me. And that was from 24 years on. But in the formative years of why I wanted to get into coaching as a high school player, it was because of Rick.\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s the type of impact Adelman had on Spoelstra. Adelman still texted Spoelstra words of encouragement from time to time during the long NBA season in recent years, with the last time the two spoke coming after a fire that destroyed Spoelstra\u2019s home in November.<\/p>\n
\u201cI admired him so much. I really looked up to him,\u201d Spoelstra said. \u201cI admired him. I wanted to take qualities that he had and try to be like him. He was just an incredible person. Super giving. Really bright and a great family man. And I became very close to their family. So, I just saw what he did, and I just constantly thought, like, that looks like a lot of fun. And the way he did it, I just really respected and admired him so much for those qualities that he brought to the profession.\u201d<\/p>\n
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