Simply put, no coach has done more with less since Patches O’Houlihan got the Average Joes to qualify for the Las Vegas Dodgeball Tournament of 2004.
The exit of franchise superhero Dwyane Wade, the unprecedented health situation of fellow Heatle Chris Bosh, and the less buzzed about but still impactful departures of Luol Deng and Joe Johnson in free agency left Heat management no choice but to whip up a roster mostly centered around rejected journeymen and memes (anybody still leasing property on Waiters Island?). “Give me your tired, your poor, your Luke Babbitts, and your James Johnsons,” said an open-armed Pat Riley, leaving Spoelstra to figure out how to make due with this makeshift assemblage.
While the first half of the season went just about how you would expect (the Heat were 11-30 through their first 41 games and appeared to be shamelessly jockeying for pole position in the “Take The Fall For Lonzo Ball” movement), what Spoelstra has pulled off since then has been nothing short of a Festivus miracle.
Winners of 22 of their 27 games since, the Miami Mafia sits just a half game out of the playoff picture in the Eastern Conference. Coach Spo has them taking and making threes at a franchise-record rate, moving the ball like the San Antonio Spurs on acid, and clawing out every defensive possession like their very survival as a species depended on it. He’s turned Dion Waiters into literal Michael Jordan, has Goran Dragic looking like our Slovenian lord and savior once again, and affirmed once and for all that you don’t need the Big Three when you have once-in-a-generation talents like Rodney McGruder and Wayne Ellington. Oh, and did I mention that he’s done it without the team’s top one-on-one defender in Justise Winslow (who was leading the team in minutes when he went down with a season-ending shoulder injury), as well as their starting power forward in (well Bosh but also) Josh McRoberts?
Build this man a statue outside of American Airlines Arena already.
1. Mike D’Antoni, Houston Rockets
If you’re trying to pinpoint the exact moment that James Harden and Co. went from the Houston Rockets to the Houston Rocket Launchers, look no further than when they hired Mike D’Antoni as their head coach. The Pringles mustache may be history, but the gung-ho tempo and the three-point carpet bombings which have become D’Antoni’s signature offensive features remain — only this time they’ve consumed all of the metaphorical steroids.
D’Antoni found perhaps the only general manager in the league crazy enough to let him turn his fever dream into a reality in Daryl Morey. Then, the pièce de résistance came when he found the perfect player to sit at the controls of his creation underneath the same roof in Harden. D’Antoni quickly christened The Bearded One as his full-time point guard, surrounded him with shooters on top of shooters, and, as they say, the rest was history.
The numbers are staggering: per ESPN, the Rockets are fourth in the NBA in pace, second in offensive efficiency, second in true shooting percentage, and are set to obliterate their own record set in 2014-15 for three-point attempts per game (32.7) by nearly 25 percent with an average of 40.6 (!!!) per game this season. It’s half-playground, half-mad science experiment, but whatever the case, D’Antoni is determined to fire away until his clip is empty and then keep firing some more.
The result of all those strewn-about shell casings? The league’s third-best record, a rock-solid MVP candidacy for Harden, and a remarkable, seemingly overnight turnaround from the Houston team that stumbled their way into the eighth seed on the final day of the regular season last year.
Will D’Antoni also have his second career Coach of the Year Award to show for it when it’s all over, thus completing the greatest redemption story of our time after the copycat NBA hijacked all his offensive principles before throwing him to the curb? The basketball gods at least owe us that much.
Image via FOX Sports Florida on YouTube
