The Miami Heat are one of the hardest working, grittiest, and most disciplined teams in the entire NBA—or at least that’s what they strive to be. While that mentality emanates throughout the organization, from the very tip-top to the last man on the bench, and even down to the team staff, it’s not something that happens by chance.
With Miami Heat Culture surrounding them and constantly being preached, though not as directly as the tagline itself, everything that you hear coming from the on-court leader’s mouth can be directly tied back to those same principles.
Stop of us if you’ve heard one of these before, such as “staying the course”, a saying that means “be disciplined”. How about “we have enough”, which means “if what we have works hard, they have a chance”.
Well, of course you have. Around these parts, they are what are referred to as Spoisms.
At this current moment though, the man behind the philosophical sayings, Erik Spoelstra, has had to coach himself up on one of the latest quandaries facing himself and his team. Here is a recent thought on the recently returned Victor Oladipo.
The Miami Heat have to play things cool with Victor Oladipo as he gets back into the mix. And Coach Spoelstra knows discipline will guide the way.
The quote comes from The Athletic (subscription required).
"“This is going to be about us tempering the expectations,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said. “This is the biggest win of all, the fact that he had had three straight years of frustrating health and injury things that he was dealing with …and he’s out here, able to compete.We all want more, I’m sure he wants more. This is about discipline. We have to all be disciplined about this.”"
The head coach isn’t wrong. That sentiment goes for him, Oladipo, Oladipo’s teammates, fans of Oladipo, fans of the Miami Heat, and likely, Oladipo’s family, friends, and everyone else.
Everyone wants more. But everyone also has to be patient, disciplined, and “temper” themselves on the situation.
One more Spoism for you, they “have to keep the main thing the main thing”. That should be about a few simple things.
That should be about getting Oladipo back to as close to his best self as possible, in a comfortable way for his long term health, while also getting him ready to be able to help the Heat as the postseason draws near, and finally in a way that also allows the Miami Heat to get themselves together and fine-tuned, as a whole unit, to make a deep postseason run together.
All in all, Spo isn’t wrong.
If you trust anybody to maximize such a delicate situation but one that can yield exponentially potent results, such as Victor Oladipo for this Heat team at anywhere near his top form when the championship season rolls around, then it’s totally a Top-15 guy of all time like Coach Spo.