I know it’s been a long time since I’ve written anything NBA-related. It’s not that there hasn’t been anything for me to write about. Quite the opposite. The last few months have been extremely busy for me. For starters, I became a first-time father. My NBA observations have been reduced to 140-character tweets and the occasional late night email chain. There are so many great NBA writers out there that if you procrastinate for an hour then there’s a good chance that one of them will tackle that same angle before your computer has had time to boot itself up.
But I couldn’t let yesterday’s Heat-Bulls game, or more importantly, the aftermath of yesterday’s Heat-Bulls game, go by without laying out my opinion on what I perceive to be one of the worst managed postgames in the history of professional sports.
Now I know that Erik Spoelstra isn’t a grizzled veteran when it comes to coaching. This is evident in the fact that not only does Spoelstra still has all of his hair but you’d be hard-pressed to find a strand of it that isn’t the same jet black hue of his youth.
But that’s no excuse for the way in which Spoelstra aired his team’s dirty laundry and allowed the media to run with the storyline that his team was a bunch of crybabies who have no idea why they’ve lost four games in a row and five of their last six.
Tommy Lasorda will never be remembered as one of the greatest leaders in sports. Sure he’s a Hall of Famer but that might be more tied to his loyalty and longevity than to anything his teams accomplished on a baseball diamond. But one thing Lasorda was notoriously good at was taking the heat (no pun intended) off of his players (i.e. Steve Sax) and giving the media something else to write about.
Lasorda was so famous for his tirades that there’s a six-minute (uncensored) YouTube video devoted to his greatest hits. A coach or a manager has a responsibility to make sure his players have nothing to worry about other than the game. When Spoelstra decided to let the media know that there were members of his team who were crying in the locker room after the game he not only gave legs to the story but he created another negative storyline.
I can think of at least 10 things Spoelstra should have said instead of the things he did. So what if they aren’t honest? So what if they come from the Coaches Cliché Handbook? Here’s the shortlist:
- “It’s just one game, folks. Sure we would have loved to get a the win. There are a dozen things we can look at as to why we lost this game, but LeBron and Dwyane’s shots at the end of regulation weren’t one of them.”
- “I told my guys the same thing I told them after we lost four out of five in November. It’s not like we haven’t gone through anything like this before. We responded back then by winning 12 in a row and 20 out of 21. I have no doubt that we have better personnel with Bibby and Miller here to finish the regular season on a similar high note.
- “We all need to look in the mirror, including the coaching staff, and ask ourselves what we can do better to turn this thing around.”
- “This one is on me. I didn’t prepare these guys. We played three games in four days. We haven’t had as much practice time as I would have liked to incorporate some of the things we’ve noticed that we’re doing wrong.”
That’s just four.
As far as LeBron’s quote about telling his teammates he wouldn’t continue failing them, Spoelstra should have said, “I told LeBron that I know he won’t and nobody in this locker room should think otherwise.”
Do you think Pat Riley would have ever confirmed a story that his players were crying in the locker room? Riles used to fine his players if they helped an opponent off the ground during a game. It’s because he had a filter. I’m guessing his response to the question would have gone something like this, “Nobody was crying. There were some guys who were definitely upset about the loss and they should be. Some of them might be getting a dry cleaning bill or a bill to replace some of the things they broke in the locker room, but there was no crying. Next question.”
Maybe I’m wrong. Spoelstra probably knows his players much better than I do. Maybe he thinks this is the best way to motivate his team with games coming up against the Blazers, Lakers, Spurs, and Thunder. Regardless, it’s Spoelstra’s job to control the message. If he doesn’t know that yet then someone in the organization, either Riley or team spokesman, Tim Donovan, needs to tell him.
Andrew Ungvari is a screenwriter and blogger for SirCharlesInCharge.com. Follow him on twitter.