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Spoelstra Got Started In the 'Mail Room'
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Spoelstra can only hope the Heat grows as fast as he did. The son of a Dutch-Irish father and Filipina mother, Spoelstra became the first Asian-American coach in any of the four U.S. major sports leagues.
In his early years in Miami, Spoelstra spent so much time in a windowless room known as "The Cave" editing game tapes and putting together video packages that Riley joked he didn't know his name for three years. Spoelstra would work all night when the team was on the road to ensure videos made it on express flights to the team hotels the next day.
"You never saw him," Wallace said. "He was in what was sort of his laboratory there. . . . It wasn't a glamorous position, staying up all night and never seeing the sun."
Spoelstra shot down reports that he kept a cot the video room. There was, he said, nothing quite so comfortable.
"It would be," he said, "more like passing out in your chair while working."
Riley said Spoelstra at first impressed him from a distance, eliciting rave reviews from former Heat assistants Van Gundy and Jeff Bzdelik. After several years as a video coordinator, Spoelstra was promoted to scout, which meant he escaped The Cave and earned hundreds of nights on the road, where he filed detailed reports on the Heat's opponents.
"These jobs don't get any easier," Spoelstra said. "My only communication for two years with the team was through e-mails and faxes."
Spoelstra might have felt disconnected, but Riley was growing more and more attached to him.
"Everything was always on time, always prepared, always diligently done, always well thought out," Riley said. And "he began to send me individual reports, general thoughts and ideas and what-do-you-thinks.
The thinking "was ahead of the wave. He's a very smart person. . . . His notes and reports to me reflected that. I was impressed with him."
It was during the Heat's 2005-06 championship season when Spoelstra was a full-time assistant coach that Riley first hinted that big things could lie ahead for him. One night after a tough loss, Spoelstra recalled, Riley said: "Hey, are you ready for this?"
"Ready for what?" Spoelstra said, desperately hoping Riley would elaborate.
