CORAL GABLES \u2014 Fire destroyed a home owned by Miami Heat coach Erik Spoelstra early Thursday, with officials saying more than 20 units were dispatched in what became a futile effort to save the property.<\/p>\n
Spoelstra was not home when the fire began, and no injuries were reported. Fire officials said \u201cthe home was unoccupied\u201d when the blaze broke out around 4:30 a.m.<\/p>\n
An investigation into what caused the fire was starting, officials said. Those probes can take weeks in some cases.<\/p>\n
Spoelstra and the Heat played in Denver on Wednesday night and their charter flight back to Miami did not land until 5:11 a.m.<\/p>\n
Spoelstra arrived at the home shortly after the plane landed, with several fire crews working to try to contain the blaze. He was seen walking around the outside of the property as the fire continued, sometimes stopping and holding his head in disbelief.<\/p>\n
Drone footage showed that much of the home was reduced to charred rubble.<\/p>\n
Smoke was still seen rising over parts of the property more than three hours after the first fire trucks arrived, but officials declared the blaze as contained around that time. Some crews were still on the scene early Thursday afternoon.<\/p>\n
Miami-Dade Fire Rescue said the blaze \u2014 with flames \u201cas tall as the trees,\u201d battalion chief Victoria Byrd said in a brief news briefing \u2014 was fought with crews both on the ground and in the air. The fire was contained to the property owned by Spoelstra and no nearby homes were damaged, Byrd said, adding that a privacy fence and tree cover impeded the initial firefighting efforts.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur units came in and did an excellent job,\u201d Byrd said.<\/p>\n
Property records show Spoelstra bought the five-bedroom home in December 2023. He had done extensive work to the property following the purchase.<\/p>\n
The team announced Thursday, an off day for the Heat, that Spoelstra is planning to coach Friday\u2019s 8 p.m. game against the Charlotte Hornets. He is scheduled to address the media at 6:15 p.m., the typical timeframe for mandatory pregame coaching media sessions.<\/p>\n
The 55-year-old coach, who is in his 18th season guiding the team and his 30th overall with the organization, is in the midst of an eight-year, $120 million contract extension signed with the team in January, the largest-ever deal for a coach of a North American pro sports franchise.<\/p>\n
A proponent of off-court bonding with team and staff, Spoelstra last month had players, coaches and staffers to his home for a family outing ahead of the season. An NBA source familiar with Spoelstra\u2019s home refuted reports that work was being done on the coach\u2019s home just prior to the fire.<\/p>\n
Spoelstra already has been through a very public crisis, when his son Santiago, the oldest of his three children, was diagnosed with Burkitt lymphoma, a type of childhood cancer that eventually went into remission after months of chemotherapy.<\/p>\n
Spoelstra\u2019s former wife, Nikki Sapp Spoelstra, publicly announced his remission in July 2022, after treatment at Nicklaus Children\u2019s Hospital.<\/p>\n
Staff writer Ira Winderman and the Associated Press contributed to this report.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CORAL GABLES \u2014 Fire destroyed a home owned by Miami Heat coach Erik Spoelstra early Thursday, with officials…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":393752,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3778],"tags":[7,12124,144,165,295,189,3881,6,67,1412,66],"class_list":{"0":"post-393751","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-miami-heat","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-crime-and-public-safety","10":"tag-heat","11":"tag-latest-headlines","12":"tag-miami","13":"tag-miami-heat","14":"tag-miamiheat","15":"tag-nba","16":"tag-news","17":"tag-social","18":"tag-sports"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/115505533491211246","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393751","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=393751"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393751\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/393752"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=393751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=393751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=393751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}