Even though he’s never won Coach of the Year, Miami Heat head coach Erik Spoelstra continues to be one of the most respected coaches in basketball.
Once again, he dominated the majority of coaching questions asked in this year’s annual NBA preseason general manager survey, which posed 50 different questions to general managers leaguewide about best teams, coaches and players leading into the 2024-25 NBA season.
Spoelstra took home 69 percent of the votes for the league’s best head coach–over Oklahoma City’s Mark Daigneault and Golden State’s Steve Kerr, who Spoelstra coached with during the 2024 Paris Olympics. He also earned the most votes for the best manager/motivator (37 percent) and best defensive schemes (23 percent); the 53-year-old finished second for which head coach makes the best in-game adjustments (24 percent)–trailing Tyronn Lue–after winning the award with a 43 percent tally last year.
The NBA’s annual GM survey has Erik Spoelstra earning the most votes for:
🔥 Best head coach in NBA (69 percent of votes)
🔥 Best defensive schemes (23%)
🔥 Best manager/motivator of people (37%)He finished second in best in-game adjustments behind only Ty Lue.
No surprise… pic.twitter.com/U3WUIfeDei
— Hot Hot Hoops (@hothothoops) October 8, 2024
The aforementioned awards he won this year he also won last year by nearly the same margin. Despite finishing with a bottom-third offense each of the last two years, Spoelstra also garnered votes for which coach runs the best offense.
Additionally, Heat assistant Chris Quinn, who was a candidate for multiple head coaching gigs earlier this offseason, finished T-4 for the best assistant, which went to Sam Cassell (Boston) and Micah Nori (Minnesota).
While he may have garnered respect, the team didn’t. Miami wasn’t listed among teams in the GM’s prediction for the top-7 in the East. The Heat have been a play-in team in back-to-back seasons with a win total projection of 44.5 wins, the same as last year.
The team may not be as sexy on paper as a few of the others, but they have the NBA’s top head coach on the sidelines who’s always five steps ahead of the opponent. They won 46 games last year with a top-10 defense despite having 35 different starting lineups–other coaches don’t churn out that type of production.
Will Erik Spoelstra work his magic yet again in 2024-25 with a bigger, more athletic roster? That remains to be seen!
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