CLEVELAND _ The lack of playing time this season for Miami Heat 3-point specialist Wayne Ellington is taking its toll _ on the coach who is charged with making such decisions.
"I'll be frank, it makes me sick to my stomach that I can't find the minutes for Wayne," Erik Spoelstra said before Wednesday night's game against the Cleveland Cavaliers at Quicken Loans Arena."
A season after setting an NBA record for 3-pointers as a reserve while playing as a featured part of the rotation that helped the Heat to a No. 6 playoff seed, Ellington closed out the 2018 portion of this season's schedule held out of five of the final seven games in December, with nine total minutes of action in the other two games. That was after starting 10 of his first 16 appearances.
"It's something that's very difficult and these are the decisions that this position is required to make. They're not easy decisions," Spoelstra said.
"Our team went through an adjustment period in December, some other guys stepped up, some lineups started to emerge. That's not an indictment on his play. We're trying to find any kind of combination to find some success."
Ellington, 31, said he appreciates Spoelstra's position, even as he tries to envision one for himself in this season's remix.
"Come off your best season in your career to this situation, of course it crosses your mind," Ellington said Wednesday of how his situation has so dramatically changed. "I'm human, at the end of the day. It's a tough situation. A lot of things cross your mind."
But he said he has yet to approach Spoelstra or the front office regarding his situation, as he plays out the one-year, $6.3 million contract he signed in July.
"Anything is a possibility," he said. "I can't sit here and say yes or no to a question like that right now. But at the same time, I want to play but I want it to be with these guys, with my brothers. Hopefully we can work it out."
Spoelstra is hopeful of the same, even as he attempts to work Dion Waiters back into the rotation, with Goran Dragic expected to return in February from knee surgery, factors that only figure to complicate the backcourt rotation.
"He's professional and mature enough to know he just has to stay with it and it'll come around his way again," Spoelstra said. "But that doesn't take away, at all, how difficult it is. I have great empathy for a guy like Wayne."
