Coach Erik Spoelstra Previews Game 2 Of Nuggets/Heat | 2023 NBA Finals

Eric, Tyler Hero's possibility for Game 2 of the series, where does that stand? And also, is it likely now that, if not tomorrow, he will return at some point in the series? The status has not changed yet. I'm not trying to be elusive about that. I don't know where that report came out, that he was playing Game 2. All we're focused on right now is his process, continuing to do work and get prepared. Whenever that timeline is, where he's ready to go, I'll let you know. A day before Game 1, you said he was definitively out. So a day before Game 2, are you not saying he's definitively out? The semantics. Is he definitively out? We're going to do this game by game. I'll let you know tomorrow, but the status hasn't changed, so you can read into that. I don't want to overstate that they're giving Bam space, but there obviously is a pocket in the middle of the floor where he has some room to operate. How is what they're doing to Bam, their coverage, different from maybe what Milwaukee did? It's different than Milwaukee. Milwaukee is a little bit more two-on-two. Staying home with the shooters is probably a little bit more like New York or maybe Chicago. But what they do, they do very well. So you have to make reads. You can't predetermine. You cannot be a robot. We want everybody being aggressive, everybody being a live option. Obviously, we want to get JV and Bam involved as much as possible. They are our two best players. We have to do it in different ways so it's not just a steady diet of whatever that may be. And there are certain aspects of what we did the other night were very good, and then there are other areas offensively where we definitely need to improve and be more intentional. Front right. Eric Arnie Stapleton from Associated Press. Can you tell me what is it in your view that makes the two-man game with Jamal and Joker such a difficult challenge? Yeah, I mean, where do you start? I mean, you have two guys that can score 50 in a playoff game. You have one guy that's a triple-double machine that loves to get guys involved. So you go down the list of myriad of things you can do defensively. You have to check off some things that you don't really want to do because of both their ability to score and Jokic's ability to create something kind of off-script. But look, this is what the finals is about. I said it before game one. You're not playing ducks. You're not playing easy competition. You have to find a way to overcome it, even if great players are playing great, and we've proven that. We can win and overcome regardless of how the game is going. An ideal situation would be if it's on our terms and we're controlling the tenor of the game, but we've also won games where we haven't been able to do that for the entire game. Tim, standing on the left. Tim Reynolds, AP. Eric, I know it's sometimes out of your control, but you only shot six free throws against Boston in game seven, only two the other night in game one. How much of an emphasis does there have to be on getting to the line more, and is it something you can prioritize when you can't really control it one way or another? Yeah, but the intentionality of how we want to attack and with appropriate spacing and areas where we can be more aggressive, whether that leads to free throws or not, you can't control that, but certainly the attacks, we didn't have enough of them. I thought the free throw disparity was appropriate. Maybe we could have gotten two, four, six more based on a call here, a call there, but overall our attack numbers were lower, and that usually translates into lower free throw attempts. Jason, hiding in the back corner on the right. Jason Jackson, Miami Heat Broadcasting. Spoe, two, one on each side of the ball. First, have you revisited anything with your shooters to maintain their let it fly mentality, regardless of what happened in game one, and then on the defensive side, even though Denver shot over 50%, having them at 104 had to be something that was positive, and where do you go from there? At the end of the day, it still ended up in a loss, so yes, we felt like there were some things that we could do better defensively, but the game may be totally different in game two. We have to be open to the competition and do whatever is necessary. In terms of the shooters, that's pretty simple. Let it fly. Ignite. Once they see two go down, it can be three, it can turn into six, just like that. As long as we're getting those kind of clean looks, that's what matters, and then obviously we want to have a little bit more balance with our attacks and paint opportunities against a team that does a good job taking it away. Ethan, third row over here. Ethan Skolnick, Five Reasons Sports. Just to follow on Jason's question there, I think you've mentioned that with shooters, you handle things differently earlier in your career than you do now. I think you mentioned Shane maybe. Could you go through that again, sort of how your approach has changed when a guy is struggling? Yes, I continue to make so many mistakes. It wasn't Shane, it was Mike, but that's like from a century ago. I barely remember those times. Shooters need just clarity and a great deal of confidence, and they get that from who cares if they get it from their coach. The coach is telling them to shoot it. I'd rather get the volume up and we'll play the percentages. When you see a bunch of reds in a row, I'm one of those guys. Let's double down and you're going to get a black. Those guys have proven time and time again they're ignitable. That's one of the things they've learned, that you're not going to go 10 for 11 every single game. You still have a bunch of ways to impact the game. Then that symbiotic relationship between our attacks and our spacing and our shooting, that has to be more aligned. We all love the looks that we got, but our attacks were a little bit lower. I want to find a little bit of a better balance with that. The best thing about it is Bam and Jimmy just infuse a ton of confidence into those guys. They're not going to stop shooting. That's the first hurdle in this league. You can't get sick at sea when you miss a few. You've got to double down and keep going, especially when they're open, clean looks. As far as the Mike story, I'll let you tell that another time. Jeff Zilget, USA Today. Eric, you had mentioned running into the Denver Nuggets often inside the bubble and having conversations. I'm wondering if there's a lasting lesson that you take away from that 2020 bubble. Pertaining to the Nuggets? No, in general. No, not necessarily. There's just respect. Again, those were just moments in between. Like, hey, how do you tie this line so I can fish? Those were the conversations. It certainly wasn't X's and O's or schematics. Just for you personally, given the unusual circumstances that that was. Probably more than anything, it was just an incredible life experience. Something that hopefully will never happen ever again in our lifetime. When we entered into that bubble, we were just as out of our element as you could probably imagine from the outside. You just did not know how long you would be there. There was an incredible emotional and mental challenge every single day. I think probably our two groups had real consistent spirit about, all right, this is different. Let's make the most of it. We have a job to do here. It was just an extraordinary time and experience. When you don't know how long you're going to be there, we ended up being there 98 days. You get touched down the first day. You're like, all right, what is this going to be like? They were just somebody we would bump into a lot. Thank you, Coach. All right, thank you.