{"id":344794,"date":"2025-10-16T11:17:43","date_gmt":"2025-10-16T11:17:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/344794\/"},"modified":"2025-10-16T11:17:43","modified_gmt":"2025-10-16T11:17:43","slug":"heats-spoelstra-says-coaching-2028-games-will-be-honor-of-lifetime-nbc-6-south-florida","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/344794\/","title":{"rendered":"Heat\u2019s Spoelstra says coaching 2028 Games will be \u2018honor of lifetime\u2019 \u2013 NBC 6 South Florida"},"content":{"rendered":"

Erik Spoelstra<\/a> was 13 the last time the Olympics<\/a> were held in Los Angeles, and he remembers what it was like watching those games on television.<\/p>\n

He\u2019ll have a better view in 2028.<\/p>\n

USA Basketball made it official on Tuesday, announcing that Spoelstra, the longtime coach of the Miami Heat, has been confirmed by its board of directors as the coach of the men\u2019s team for the 2027 World Cup in Qatar and the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles<\/a>. He takes over for Golden State coach Steve Kerr, whose tenure ended when the Americans captured a fifth consecutive Olympic men\u2019s basketball gold at the Paris Games in 2024.<\/p>\n

\u201cAbsolutely, absolutely humbled. I mean, it is the honor of a lifetime,\u201d Spoelstra \u2014 a two-time NBA<\/a> champion as Heat head coach \u2014 said in an interview with The Associated Press. \u201cAnd I\u2019m just really appreciative of it and being a part of the USA Basketball program. The Olympics are incredible, no matter where it is, but to have the opportunity to compete on your own soil, that\u2019s simply remarkable.\u201d<\/p>\n

USA Basketball men\u2019s national team managing director Grant Hill ultimately made the pick to offer Spoelstra the job. Spoelstra was on Kerr\u2019s staff for the 2023 World Cup in Manila and the 2024 Olympics, which made him a logical candidate.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have known Erik Spoelstra for the better part of two decades and have gotten to know him better throughout our time with USA Basketball,\u201d Hill said. “Spo is not only an outstanding coach, but a great colleague, friend and father, all of which make him the perfect choice to continue the USA Basketball men\u2019s national team coaching legacy through 2028.\u201d<\/p>\n

Spoelstra will become the third person who coaches the U.S. men in a home Olympics, joining Bob Knight (who won gold in 1984 at Los Angeles) and Lenny Wilkens (who won gold in 1996 at Atlanta). Spoelstra is the first Heat coach to hold the job and will do so in the city where his boss, Heat president Pat Riley, became a coaching icon while leading the Los Angeles Lakers.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen they asked me, one of the first people I thought of was Pat, because I felt that at some point he should have been the head coach for the USA program,\u201d Spoelstra said. \u201cAnd then my second thought was, \u2018Oh, it\u2019s going to be in L.A.\u2019 It\u2019s amazing, the serendipity of it. It\u2019s a way for me to honor him as well because it will be in L.A., where he had so much success. I feel humbled by that.<\/p>\n

\u201cNone of this would have happened without Pat and I\u2019m the beneficiary of the opportunity. If I wasn\u2019t part of the Miami Heat organization and worked for Pat all these years, this opportunity with USA Basketball would have never happened.\u201d<\/p>\n

Spoelstra, a father of three, agreed to take the job only after deciding what the demands \u2014 both time and travel \u2014 would mean for his kids.<\/p>\n

If Paris was any indication, they\u2019ll be fine.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy kids still talk about it, being in Paris and celebrating the wins when we would come back on the bus. We’d go back into the hotel lobby and all the families were there cheering for us and hugging all the players and all staff. It was absolutely priceless,\u201d Spoelstra said. \u201cAnd then to finish off the night celebrating with ice cream for your kids, it was just amazing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Spoelstra was the presumed front-runner for months to get the job. It\u2019ll come with immense pressure, since the Americans no longer can expect to be easy winners of Olympic gold. The U.S. had to rally from a 17-point deficit to beat Serbia in the semifinals in Paris last summer, then needed a flurry of four 3-pointers from Stephen Curry in the final minutes to hold off France for the gold medal.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe game is global now,\u201d Spoelstra said. \u201cIt\u2019s where it should be. Great players are coming from everywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n

Spoelstra never really thought about a chance to coach the Olympic team, or even being involved in the program, until a conversation he had one day with Heat CEO Nick Arison, the son of team managing general partner and Basketball Hall of Famer Micky Arison. Nick Arison \u2014 who was part of the support staff when Duke\u2019s Mike Krzyzewski was coaching the national teams \u2014 told Spoelstra in that meeting that if he ever got asked to be part of USA Basketball, he needed to accept the offer immediately.<\/p>\n

Those offers did come. USA Basketball national team director Sean Ford, former managing director Jerry Colangelo and former national team head coach Gregg Popovich brought Spoelstra in to coach the select team \u2014 the team that was assembled to practice with and against the Olympic team going into the Tokyo Games. That led to Kerr making Spoelstra part of the staff for the next Olympic cycle.<\/p>\n

And now, he\u2019s got the top job.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we won in Paris, after the anthem, Steve turned to me \u2014 and he was joking \u2014 but he said, \u2018Hey, good luck in \u201928.\u2019 I was just really appreciative of that,” Spoelstra said. “Guys like Steve, Pop and Coach K, who have been through it, they\u2019ll want to make sure that you\u2019re prepared in every way possible to represent the country and the team in an appropriate way.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tThe 2028 Los Angeles Olympic Games will feature more events and will award more medals than prior Olympics.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Erik Spoelstra was 13 the last time the Olympics were held in Los Angeles, and he remembers what…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":344795,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3778],"tags":[2489,7,144,295,189,3881,6,4109],"class_list":{"0":"post-344794","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-miami-heat","8":"tag-2028-los-angeles-olympics","9":"tag-basketball","10":"tag-heat","11":"tag-miami","12":"tag-miami-heat","13":"tag-miamiheat","14":"tag-nba","15":"tag-team-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/115383569764320158","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344794","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=344794"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344794\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/344795"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=344794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=344794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=344794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}