3:56pm: The extension will cover four years, according to Ira Winderman of The Sun Sentinel (Twitter link)
3:25pm: Heat coach Erik Spoelstra will sign a long-term extension with the team, tweets ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski. Spoelstra, who had one year left on his current deal, has been negotiating an extension behind the scenes.
Spoelstra, 48, is about to begin his 12th season in Miami, ranking him second to the Spurs‘ Gregg Popovich for the longest current tenure with one organization. He has a 523-363 coaching record and a pair of NBA titles.
[RELATED: Longest-Tenured NBA Head Coaches]
As Wojnarowski notes, Spoelstra has spent his entire career with the Heat, starting as a video coordinator in 1995. He was later promoted to assistant coach, then replaced Pat Riley as head coach in 2008.
Too bad he doesn’t have LeBron, D-Wade, and Bosh all in their prime to make him look like a great coach anymore.
Imagine thinking this
Congrats sir. One of the most ignorant comments of the year. Almost all teams that have star players are championship contenders. Pop, Rivers, Kerr, etc. I guess those guys aren’t good coaches either?
Doc Rivers is not a good coach. He had a similar All-Star team couldn’t get out of the first round of the playoffs taking maybe to the second round couple of times.. and that’s his ceiling LOL
Rivers not a good coach? Did you see how LAC played last year with no superstar?
The way they played last year was the result of a great roster with the help of Jerry West. If you look at Doc Rivers track record he has not been out of the first round in 4 years.
As a side note you bring up something very important, and that’s the Clippers lost quite a few key guys that played so well last year in the playoffs. Yes they have two superstars added to the roster but it’s a huge change and might take a little bit to gel..
Ignorant comments? He’s just telling the truth.
Comments like this show how little you know about basketball
Now we will watch Steve Kerr follow in the footsteps of Spoelstra.
Warriors still loaded. Lose Durant plug-in D’Angelo Russell. Lose a couple veterans that have gotten older, plug in some decent youth. (Alec Burks Willie cauley-stein.)
They’re not clear number one in the league anymore, but I bet if Klay comes back at all this year they’re the four or five seed.
Klay comes back off acl that quick and picks up right where he left off?
Maybe sometime between All-Star break and the playoffs? Who really knows. I know he’s going to try to get out there as quick as he can and at 6-7 and a great shooter I think he’ll be real good when he comes back.
I expect him to play at some point and, as a Warriors fan, hope he plays well. To expect him to be what he was in the Finals before he got hurt would be phenomenal. I could expect to see that in November of ‘20, but March??
Fingers crossed… go W’s !! In the meantime we watch Curry and Russell try to mesh and keep up with the other guard tandems that are so strong. Portland Houston Utah Etc
Harden-Westbrook-future train wreck. It is amazing how your jealousy of so many other teams comes out. You are envious of Spoelstra, since your coach Antoni (yes I left the “D” out since his team’s have no idea how to play it) has coach so many teams with multiple all stars and has yet to win any chips. You have to be a good coach to when chips and balance the egos of your all star players. Trust me if Riley didn’t think he is good, he wouldn’t have gotten an extension. A winner knows what he is looking for and Roles is a winner! Your Jerry West comment means if the Rockets had him making personnel moves they would be champions, In think not with Harden who is all about iso play. If West was in charge he would trade him and put together a cohesive team to have a shot at winning, he is all about the chemistry of the team!
What’s spoelstras non-Lebron record? That’s the easiest way to tell.
Well, it’s easy, but it’s not a smart way to evaluate a coach.
Teams with great coaches typically meet or exceed expectations. Lots of entities predict NBA records and individual games. Good coaches usually outperform the predictions.
Pretty sure most NBA championships were led by HOF players. The only team I think bucks that trend is Detroit. All the others had at least 1 future or current HOFer… so no matter how good of a coach you are, it’s always been about the level of players. In 4 yrs this roster is completely turned over. I don’t see anyone outside of Herro and maybe Bam being on the roster. So once they are out of cap hell, maybe they land a big fish or 2.
Need to speed up that process if they can dump a few average joes.
Coach has quite a bit to do with it. Phil Jackson’s specialty was taking a team of great players who couldn’t win it all. Fact he did it a few times. Bulls and Lakers.