The 2019-20 NBA season is still more than a month away from starting back up, but Miami Heat head coach Erik Spoelstra is already quite confident that his team will find success.
The primary reason for that confidence is the chemistry that exists between his players.
“It will be different,” Spoelstra recently said. “It will not be like a normal end-of-September training camp, where you have your preseason and gear up for the regular season and get prepared for an eight-month marathon. That is physically, mentally and emotionally different than this preparation.
“This will be much more of a sprint prep and you’ll have to fast track. Thankfully, we have a group that had a lot of built-in chemistry and enjoyed playing with each other. A lot of the nuances of our success were not necessarily Xs and Os, it was the ability of the guys to read and react off of each other and bring the best off of each other.”
He went on to say that the pressure will be on from the very first game. Surely, he’ll echo that sentiment to his players once the real preparation begins.
“These will not be preseason games. These will not be games against teams that are not playing for anything. These will be the very playoff teams that we hope to be facing two weeks later,” Spoelstra said. “I think, in many ways, it’s the purest form of competition. It’s just going to be about basketball, competition, which team can perform at a higher level than the other team and do it without the other motivations or potential energy from a fan base.”
Through the 2019-20 season, the Heat have been one of the most consistent teams in the league. Behind the leadership of All-Stars Jimmy Butler and Bam Adebayo, the Heat have regained their status as one of the best teams in the Eastern Conference.
Currently, they sit at the No. 4 seed in the Eastern conference.
While success in the regular season is always welcome, Spoelstra and his players surely will not be satisfied with anything less than a deep playoff run.