Miami Heat: Coach Spo battling Celtics, Brad Stevens, and History in ECF series

The Miami Heat tip-off their Eastern Conference Finals series with the Celtics on Tuesday. Coach Spo is not only battling Stevens and his C’s, but also history.

The Miami Heat and the Boston Celtics have earned the right to do battle in the Eastern Conference Finals. The two teams fought through the rigors of a tough Eastern Conference playoffs and now we are here.

The individual teams, players, and matchups are surely something to keep an eye on, but the men who don’t get as much credit are worth a look here as well. This goes especially in this series where you are talking two of the top coaches in the league, according to everyone in the know.

When looking at this coaching matchup between Brad Stevens and Erik Spoelstra, it seems as juicy as it really is on the outside. Basically, you have The Wunderkind in Brad Stevens going up against another wunderkind in The Prodigy that is Pat Riley‘s, Erik Spoelstra.

Here’s the thing though, since joining the league and starting with the 2013-14 season, Brad Stevens has all but dominated Coach Spo. In the 24 matchups that I counted between them, Stevens has won twice as many as Coach Spo.

With a record of 8-16 against the Celtics head man all time, the numbers aren’t exactly in Coach Spo’s favor. How do we read those though?

Well, there is only one way to read them, as they are. According to these numbers, Brad Stevens has Erik Spoelstra’s number.

But wait, there’s more to this story.

Since Stevens came into the league, the last year of the Big 3 era, the Miami Heat have been in major flux. I like to call it sports, basketball, and NBA purgatory.

Basically, due to Spo’s coaching and the Miami Heat Culture, the teams were just good enough to make a bottom seed and be ousted early in the postseason or right on the cusp of an eighth seed in the playoffs.

Now, that was still quite the accomplishment because those rosters shouldn’t have even made it that far. They just weren’t that good relative to the competition. That has all changed now.

If you want to take a true view of that head to head coaching record, you have to do so in an with all things equal sort of view. With a team that’s equitable to his talent-wise this season, this is the truest test of wills between the two highly regarded coaches.

When all things are equal, I believe Spo is the better coach. He has proved what Stevens has proved, in that he can win with a ton of talent but he has also proven it the other way around.

He can win when he doesn’t have the talent. Spo has the talent this year though and this is his chance.

It won’t be easy though. This is not only because Spo is battling the Celtic players and Brad Stevens, but also because he is battling the history that their head to head record says exists.