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After failing the Heat’s preseason conditioning test last year, Mitchell revealed this week that team president Pat Riley told him, in May, that he needs to reduce his body fat this season. “The crazy thing,” Davion Mitchell said on the “Deuce and Mo” podcast, “is him and Spo [Erik Spoelstra] didn’t say anything about basketball at the end of the year, when you have your exit meeting, there was no basketball [talk]. It was ‘get your weight down. Be in shape. That’s all we want.’ This is Heat culture to the T.” According to Mitchell, Riley told him bluntly: “We understand the situation but this year, we’ve got to get you back down.” Mitchell listened; he said he has lost “a lot” of weight.
The Heat’s conditioning test is considered among the most daunting in the league. With most teams, “you have to run up the court three times” in one minute, Mitchell said. “Miami does it five times. It’s one of the hardest things I’ve done in my life. You’ve got to run it in one minute and you only have a two-minute break. You have to do it five times. “When I ran last year, I didn’t even pass. I wasn’t even there [training at Kaseya Center in the weeks prior]. I just had a kid. I just had my daughter, and I literally had to get on a red eye and go the gym. It was tough last year.”
Mitchell further elaborated during his appearance on the Sacramento-based podcast. “The beginning of the year last year, I was going through a lot mentally,” he said. “Having a kid. Honestly, I didn’t feel I was in the best shape at the beginning of the year last year. Spo understood that and respected everything I do. He knows how I work hard. “It was a time that I was so messed up in the summertime, there were times in camp I didn’t feel like myself. I was super quiet, not even myself. “I respected [Spoelstra] because he put me out there and made me grow as a player. He really believed in me. I was going through so much mentally, it was hard to have confidence in everything I was doing. It wasn’t basketball; it was life. People don’t understand we’re still human.”
Heat Central: Donovan Mitchell believes this Heat team adding Giannis and Klay Thompson will be a dangerous team: “All he (Klay) gotta do is stand right there because Giannis has so much gravity. If you help on Giannis, who you gonna help off of? That’s what makes them dangerous. They also got Davion, Wiggins, Bam, Larsson. And they got Spo. He’s a great coach. — Klay is a top 5 shooter ever!”
The game was also attended by Miami Heat head coach Erik Spoelstra, who came to watch two Heat players face off against each other. For Serbia, Heat forward Nikola Jovic finished with five points in 11 minutes before fouling out. For Italy, fellow Heat forward Simone Fontecchio scored 15 points, knocking down three of his eight attempts from beyond the arc. Serbia’s biggest star, Nikola Jokic, also had a relatively quiet game by his standards, finishing with eight points and eight rebounds in the win.
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Winderman thinks that 2028 would be a perfect moment for the legendary coach to move to the front office like Brad Stevens did with the Boston Celtics: "When you talk about the Heat turnaround, after the 2028 Los Angeles games, to me, would be the natural time for Spo to maybe move to the front office to step back," Winderman said for SiriusXM. "Right now, I know he loved it. It would make sense. But who knows? Maybe he's one of those coaching lifers. Maybe he's Hubie, and he's going to come back, you know, in a different way and keep doing that, just like I think Pat Riley will never fade away," he concluded.
Cyro Asseo: I asked Klay Thompson on adapting his game to age/new roles & why the Miami Heat are a great fit: "As you get older, you train differently... With Coach Erik Spoelstra & his staff, I was just really attracted to the fact that they built such a well-rounded roster." @hoopshype
ClutchPoints: “To be honest not really, but I know coach Spo’s story… I know him and Steve Kerr worked together with Team USA and Steve had nothing but great things to say… I know it’s a demanding atmosphere and that’s what attracted me.” Klay Thompson on his relationship with Erik Spoelstra before joining the Heat (via @ZachWeinberger)
Heat Central: Coach Spo on the narrative the Heat don’t have shooting: “We love it. I think there’s going to be a lot of eyeballs on our team this year. This is what we wanted. — it was certainly something we wanted to address with the addition of Giannis and we think we’ve addressed that”
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Was it a relief to make it to the Hall of Fame? Doc Rivers: I believed that I was going to get in at some point. But it was a relief that I was in. I wanted to get in while I was still coaching, and I achieved that. I championed that. I really fought early on for Pop [Gregg Popovich]. I’ve always got something I’m fighting for. I just felt like Steve Kerr, myself, Spo [Erik Spoelstra, should be Hall of Famers]. College coaches get to coach and be [named] “Hall of Fame coach.” But [active] NBA coaches rarely get that. I really believe it would have saved some of these guys’ jobs, like George Karl. … His career should have been in the Hall. Then he gets in after he leaves [coaching]. But would he still have been coaching if he was “Hall of Fame coach George Karl?” So, it’s a big thing for me, and I’m still pushing to get Rick Carlisle in now. It’s so funny. I’m in, but now I’m still working for NBA coaches.
Heat Central: Gabe Vincent speaks on what makes Erik Spoelstra a great coach: “They have their standards of what they do and then they change things as they go based on who they have. He’s not going to make a work horse into a race horse, a plumber into an electrician. He’s going to find a place for you to do what you do. — Spo has done a good job of that whether it’s the teams with the big 3, the team where we had a run, or even this past season” (Via @notbpod)
They’ve done all of that while also being one of the most physical teams in the NBA and utilizing more versatile schemes than just about anyone in the league. Per a league source with Second Spectrum access, Miami switched on 38 percent of the pick-and-rolls they defended last season, which ranked third behind the Brooklyn Nets and Los Angeles Lakers. Additionally, the Heat were top five in switch frequency in the 2021-22 and 2022-23 seasons. Spoelstra also has been one of the league’s most prominent adopters of zone defense strategies.