The Miami Heat may only have one player on the upcoming Team USA roster for the Tokyo Olympics, with Jimmy Butler opting not to play and while they may only have one representative actually heading to Tokyo, they’ll have a presence among the roster and influence on the squad.
It was reported on Wednesday that Miami Heat Head Coach, Erik Spoelstra, has accepted a role to join Team USA at their Las Vegas Camp. While he won’t be heading to Tokyo or coaching the main Team USA squad, he’ll coach the U.S. Select Team.
That’s the group of players brought in to help scrimmage against the Team USA squad during camp. Here is a quote from Spo on the opportunity, per NBA.com.
The Miami Heat will be active this offseason at every opportunity. Perhaps a bit of schmoozing is in order for Coach Spo at Team USA Training Camp.
"“I really just want to be a part of the program,” Spoelstra said. “I’m always pushing myself to get better in the offseasons; I go visit people and all that stuff. This is going to be a basketball immersion. I mean, the dinners, the team meetings … for where I am right now in my career, I think this is the perfect thing for a summer of development.”"
While all of that is fine and dandy in itself, there is an even more intriguing factor to this whole scenario. While Erik Spoelstra won’t actually travel to Tokyo, he’ll spend a considerable amount of time around not only the guys on the Select squad, but the Olympians themselves.
With that, you can imagine the amount of talent that he’ll be exposed to but more importantly, that’ll be exposed to him, such as Damian Lillard. Listen, the gravitational pull of a coach isn’t as strong as that of a player that attempts to coerce another guy to come join a team, but when talking about the Miami Heat and a coach like Spo, there might be something to it.
Bam Adebayo will have his work cut out for him, especially in an offseason where the Heat should be extremely active in pursuing talent to bring in, but Erik Spoelstra can contribute a bit in that area too. That would be as much as he can without tampering, of course.
Either way it stands, things continue to get interesting for the Miami Heat. This just puts them one step closer to stroking the right keys to put themselves back at the tip of contention.