LOS ANGELES _ To appreciate how low key Erik Spoelstra's contractually written personnel input is, consider the response from Udonis Haslem this past week when told about that influence.
"He does?" the Miami Heat captain said. "I had no idea."
He does. And yet during Spoelstra's 10-year coaching tenure, there never has been a moment like Miami Dolphins coach Adam Gase had this past week with Jay Ajayi, when he said enough was enough, and a leading man was summarily dispatched with little regard for return.
"I never marched in and said that," Spoelstra said, speaking in general terms of players he has coached. "I think your instinct, when you're younger, you probably have more human-nature thoughts like that.
"I've learned, as I've gotten older, for me to truly be the best for the guys is just to focus on coaching. But the communication and input? They always ask, and I don't feel like I need more."
There certainly have been ample tests along the way. There was dealing with the whirlwind that was Michael Beasley, and the reality that Mario Chalmers was fined more often than Beasley during their rookie seasons. There was Gerald Green's bizarre off-court incident. There were locker-room lawyers holding Spoelstra to hard-line league rules, including practice limits. And there have been enough broken plays, well, to break a man.
And yet the hammer has never been dropped like it was with Gase and Ajayi.
"We tend," Haslem said, "to gravitate to guys that are a little on the edge. We get a lot of production out of those guys, so we kind of like our guys to go a little rough around the edges. I think Spo embraces that."
In an era of coaching power plays, including the sway Gase, 39, holds in just his second season as a head coach on any level, Spoelstra, 47, finds himself going in the other direction. The input is all well and good, but he has the stability of Pat Riley, Andy Elisburg and Nick Arison in the front office to address such matters.
"I think you learn early on to separate the business and the basketball," Spoelstra said. "And, interestingly enough, as my input has grown over the years, I've actually looked to have input less, so I can focus more on just coaching the team, and focus the majority of my efforts and my energy just on the guys in this gym.
"Now, Pat and Andy and Nick have been phenomenal with me, such incredible open communication. Because we've worked together for so long, we are a lot on the same page."
And yet those pages can often turn without Riley, Elisburg or Arison on the same chapter, rarely more than one on a regular-season trip with the team at the same time. If there is (not that there has been) a moment of insurgency, Spoelstra is the one on the front line _ and someone with enough clout to make demands.
"You have thoughts. It's human nature," Spoelstra said of such in-the-moment moments. "But as I've become more of a veteran coach, I want them just to feel confidence and comfort that I'm only focused on this, I'm not thinking about outs. They've hired me to be a coach and I want to be able to check that box."
Haslem, having been on the roster for all 10 seasons of Spoelstra's tenure as head coach, said the approach by the Heat's personnel hierarchy has made it possible for him to not even know that Spoelstra has a hammer to throw down.
"We haven't had anybody that's been too over the top," Haslem said. "So it's been a good job by the organization to just bring in the right type of guys."
