Pat Riley may not have to look very far to find his eventual successor as lead decision-maker in the Miami Heat front office.
Brian Windhorst of ESPN reported in a piece on Wednesday that Heat head coach Erik Spoelstra is a likely candidate to get some or all of Riley’s powers as team president whenever Riley decides to retire. Windhorst goes on to add that some other team will “probably” have interest in hiring Spoelstra for both jobs if for some reason he does not take them over with the Heat.
Riley, who will turn 74 in March, has served as president of the Heat since 1995, including two separate stints as head coach and three NBA titles. While there are a number of older and still successful NBA executives (the soon-to-be 81-year-old Jerry West with the LA Clippers for one), Riley may not want to stick around for a rebuild if Miami has to do so in the post-Dwyane Wade era.
As for Spoelstra, who is still only 48, he is as trusted as a right-hand man to Riley as any. Spoelstra joined the Heat as a video coordinator in 1995 as well and worked his way up the ranks, serving as an assistant coach from 1997 to 2008, including under Riley on Miami’s 2006 championship team. He was then promoted to head coach and has overseen two titles of his own, sporting a record of 503-340 (.597) in 11 years. The Heat have only missed the playoffs twice under Spoelstra’s watch and are currently sixth in the East this season.
A key theme of Windhorst’s piece is that the dual head coach-president role has rarely worked (see: Stan Van Gundy, Doc Rivers, the freshly-fired Tom Thibodeau, etc.). But a major exception he lists is that of Gregg Popovich, who occupies both roles for the San Antonio Spurs and was not hired into the dual position from the very start like Van Gundy and Thibodeau were. That may be the precedent that the Heat are going for, and it wouldn’t be surprising with how Riley has always gone out of his way to back Spoelstra over the years.
