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The impact Miami Heat (Shopping Cart IconShop Heat Fan Gear) president Pat Riley has had on Heat head coach Erik Spoelstra is well-documented. But it’s another Hall of Famer who drew Spoelstra into coaching. Rick Adelman, a Basketball Hall of Fame inductee who played seven NBA seasons before becoming one of the sport’s all-time winningest coaches, was Spoelstra’s first coaching role model. “He became the reason why I decided to pursue the profession of coaching,” said Spoelstra, who grew up in Portland while Adelman was having success as the Portland Trail Blazers’ head coach.
As a teenager, Spoelstra would often find himself in Adelman’s home office during gatherings at the Adelmans’ 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. “I was just in awe of the basketball intel that was in that office,” 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. “I 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.”
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. “He was able to do things in this profession with such success and humility and grace and high character,” Spoelstra continued on Adelman. “Really understated. But you knew who the coach was at every place he’s been. He’s a Hall of Famer, but I think he’s 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.”
![“Everything you see right now with [Nikola] Jokic …](https://sportsdata.usatoday.com/gcdn/content-pipeline-sports-images/sports2/nba/players/830650.png?format=png8&auto=webp&quality=85,75&width=140)
Spoelstra added that “everybody in the league” has a package of offensive plays that have Adelman’s fingerprints on it — sets that have a big man playing out of the elbow in a triple-threat position (able to shoot, pass or dribble). “Everything you see right now with [Nikola] Jokic playing out of the elbow, top of the floor. They’re all shades of what [Adelman] did decades ago in Sacramento,” Spoelstra said. “And 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.”
Adelman was Spoelstra’s 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. “They’re titans in the profession. They are,” Spoelstra said of Adelman and Riley. “Maybe 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.”
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That’s 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’s home in November. “I admired him so much. I really looked up to him,” Spoelstra said. “I 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.”
Ellington, 38, will lead the Heat’s summer league coaching staff when Miami begins the summer circuit at the four-team California Classic on July 3 in San Francisco. Ellington and the Heat’s summer squad will then join the rest of the NBA at Las Vegas Summer League, which will run from July 9-19. “This is the next step in my journey, and I’m super excited for it,” Ellington said Friday during a teleconference with a few South Florida reporters. “I’m super appreciative of the opportunity and the confidence that Spo and the front office has in me, allowing me to do this this summer. So I’m looking forward to it.”
In addition, the Bulls will interview Miami Heat assistant coach Chris Quinn as part of their head coaching search, league sources told HoopsHype. Quinn has a strong background in player development and has worked as an assistant coach on Erik Spoelstra’s staff since 2014.
Tim Reynolds: Want to hear something wild? Will Hardy now has the seventh-longest active tenure among all NBA coaches, after Jason Kidd's ouster in Dallas. Erik Spoelstra, Steve Kerr, Tyronn Lue, Mark Daigneault, Chris Finch, Rick Carlisle ... and then Will Hardy.
Per league sources, new Bucks coach Taylor Jenkins signed a long-term deal with a salary that is well north of $10 million annually. Jenkins isn’t the highest-paid coach in the league, as that honor goes to Golden State’s Steve Kerr at $17.5 million annually (for now, as he continues to contemplate whether to return). Miami’s Erik Spoelstra is second (approximately $15 million). And Jenkins, the former Memphis Grizzlies coach who was once a Bucks assistant in Antetokounmpo’s early days, is up there now.
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Barry Jackson: Ware cracks, good naturedly, that he has "to work on the plus/minus." For all of his impact, he was 2nd worst on the team in that category; that matters with Spo... Probed on that, Ware says he can control what happens in paint but not on opponents' 3s... Speaking of Spo, Ware said he and Spo have good relationship and "have more of an understanding of each other" now.
Five Reasons Sports: I asked Bam Adebayo if this team has enough to get out of the play-in through internal improvement or needs change. He opened by saying “that is not a question for me, I feel like that is a question for Pat, a question for Spo.”
Five Reasons Sports: Spoelstra on Ware and Bam playing together: "They were able to do it in more impactful games as the season progressed. Both of them took a jump from where it was a year ago, or even at the beginning of the season."
