New MIA coach Erik Spoelstra is interviewed in this week's Sports Business Journal (a subscription is required to read the full article). A couple of highlights:Pet peeve: "It’s tough to deal with people who don’t tell the truth."
Greatest competitor: "Alonzo Mourning, for so many years and for so many different reasons. To compete and fight back from his kidney disease is truly inspiring."
Favorite quote: "It’s something my dad gave me and I’ve used it with the Heat so many different times: 'Every job is a self-portrait of the person who did it. You should autograph your work with excellence.'"
On how Dwyane Wade playing in the Olympics this summer impacted his Heat teammates: "We’ve had a better commitment from guys coming in this summer and getting ready for the season earlier than we’ve had in so many years. Virtually everybody on our roster has been here for the last five or six weeks. And many of them attribute that to saying, 'Hey, Dwyane has been working out since May. We’ve seen him on TV and the level he’s playing at. We have to get our game ready.'"
On his experience as a scout: "It’s a pretty lonely existence out there. It’s a very important job, but it’s also one where there’s a little bit of a disconnect. One of the most beneficial parts of the job for me personally was the fact that you almost become a part of the team you’re following. I’d see a team maybe three or four times in a row. After I’d see them, watch film on them, do the stats and write up a report, by the time I’d sent it back to our coaches, it was almost as if I knew that team better than I knew our team.
The beauty of it was that after two seasons doing that, I really got to learn so many different coaching philosophies, learned different ways of doing things, different offensive and defensive schemes and ways of communicating and coaching and teaching players. I really thought it was a fantastic learning experience."
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