Some have seen in his statements a thinly veiled allusion to Jordan Poole and Jonathan Kuminga… Passing in front of the microphone of his player Draymond Green’s podcast, Steve Kerr said all the good things he thought of the Heat. Especially the existing champion mentality within the whole squad.
” You have to establish it throughout the season with your team. The message must be: whoever is fit will play. And guys have to be connected enough not only to understand it, but also to accept it. Caleb Martin was the star of the Boston series. He’s hardly a factor in this series (against the Nuggets) offensively, he hasn’t played much. But he scored a massive 3-pointer in the fourth quarter (in match 2)”, recalls the coach.
He is referring here to an adjustment made by Erik Spoelstra in recent weeks. His Heat counterpart has indeed preferred to end the previous series against Boston by injecting Caleb Martin in his five, to the detriment of Kevin Love who did not let anything appear in the face of this change in status.
We recall that Martin played so well during this conference final that he could have stolen the MVP trophy from Jimmy Butler. But change of atmosphere for him since the start of the NBA Finals. To fight against the size of Denver, Kevin Love made his return to the five after three “DNP”. That didn’t stop Martin from converting that decisive award-winning shot with less than four minutes remaining in Game 2.
This makes the coach’s decisions very simple
“ None of the Miami players are there to say to themselves: ‘I didn’t play’ or ‘They made this player play’. They only think about winning. And we know what we are talking about in relation to the groups we had. When you have that champion mentality, everyone is involved. Everyone is trying to win. Nobody cares about that stuff. We don’t go into the locker room saying to ourselves: ‘I should have played more’, we just want to win. And that’s the beauty of discovering that magic when you have a champion team is that everyone is involved and it makes the coaching decisions very simple. Just follow your instincts and pick the one that plays well », Further develops Kerr.
And this is how Erik Spoelstra navigates these playoffs, relying on a rotation of ten players, with sometimes random playing times for some. With the exception of the two team leaders of course, Jimmy Butler and Bam Adebayo.
Listening to the statement of the coach of the reigning champions, for a few more days, it is difficult not to draw a parallel with his own training. A month earlier, Jordan PooleJonathan Kuminga or even JaMychal Green had all expressed a form of frustration with their playing time. Moods that obviously do not match the mentality described by the coach…
