Miami Heat: Why Erik Spoelstra Shouldn't Take Heat for NBA Finals Collapse

In the coming days, weeks and months, the Miami Heat will try and figure out what went wrong. How could a team that showed so much promise coming into the NBA Finals look so broken and battered on their way out?

How could a team that ripped through the defending Eastern Conference champions and then the league's reigning MVP fall so short against a team (the Mavericks) that beat a limping champion (Lakers) and beat a team not ready for the moment (Thunder)?

The questions are endless, and there is no doubt that there will be plenty finger-pointing at the team's easiest target: Erik Spoelstra.

Yes, LeBron James will endure plenty of criticism about his lackluster performance in the NBA Finals. They will question his mettle, heart and desire. But LeBron is not a problem the Miami Heat can fix, nor will they attempt to.

There is no answer for what troubles him. His problems, real or exaggerated, exist in between his ears, and his removal from Miami wouldn’t make them any better.

The truth is that replacing Erik Spoelstra wouldn’t either. Clearly the head coach, and the primary decision-maker, must foot some of the blame for the failure of his team.

In a series where adjustments were key and even the smallest decision could render the most pivotal impact, Erik Spoelstra was alarmingly out-coached. Rick Carlisle, who has taken his share of the blame for the short comings of former teams, ran proverbial coaching circles around Spoelstra.

He made adjustments like switching to zone to confuse an already stagnant Heat offense. He made substitutions and defensive matchups that prevented (to some small degree) LeBron from attacking the rim and Wade from getting open while playing off the ball.

In the chess match that was the NBA Finals, Spoelstra had no chance. Carlisle was, and is, the better coach.

This team was beyond Spoelstra, a fact made evident by the hydraulic lift brought in to signal the arrival of Chris Bosh and LeBron James in Miami. Spoelstra never had control because you can’t control a collection of superstars who are hired guns.

There was no organic growth. They were brought in to win, and Spoelstra was supposed to be along to keep the pieces in place. He did the best he could with a team that was terribly flawed from day one.

Pat Riley assembled of trio of stars without adding the right role players needed to make an NBA championship possible.

In the end, the decision to run the Heatles into the ground wasn’t Spoelstra’s to make. He had no choice in the matter. He had three big-time players, two complementary players (Mike Miller and Udonis Haslem) and seven players who would be assigned to mop-up duty on any other contending team.

Spoelstra was playing three-on-five most of the year hoping that the sheer talent of his top stars would be enough to make up for their deficiencies in depth, youth and versatility.

If the Heat were gassed by Game 5 (which is the popular opinion of those who have covered the Heat), then it was a product of their own doing. No amount of good coaching could have saved the Heat from intense burnout. Excessive minutes were necessary to victory and a key to their demise.

Now Pat Riley, the evil genius behind the Heat, has painted himself into a corner. His three stars make up enough money that a reduction in the salary cap—and most frighteningly, the implementation of a hard cap—makes it impossible to add quality pieces to the mix.

The Heat will continue to have to grab players off the scrap heap and hope they produce. They’ll have to draft well and hope to catch lightning in a bottle.

You cannot build a team the way the Heat did. You can’t hope to run your superstars into the ground and still be effective in crunch time. You cannot pick up ring-chasing veterans, minutes away from retirement, hoping that they’ll recapture the youth that has escaped them and play inspired basketball for 82 games.

You can’t squeeze blood from a turnip, turn back the hands of time or hope to skirt around the basic principles that championship teams are built on.

The Miami Heat might look to Spoelstra as the scapegoat. After all, everyone needs one, but it would just be a diversion from the real issue plaguing the Miami Heat.

The Heat brass know deep down this series was theirs for the taking. Had LeBron James been his best when his team needed him the most, the Mavericks would have never made it to a Game 5.

LeBron deflected criticism last night and will do so all summer, but it was he who cost the Miami Heat their second NBA title.

It was a superstar so consumed by his own arrogance, so burdened by the weight of heavy expectations, that he was unable to dig down deep and find that drive and determination to be greater than he has ever known, to be as good as everyone believed he could be.

And let’s not buy into the rhetoric that Pat Riley can make more out of LeBron. You can’t teach desire. You can’t force a work ethic on someone who’s been allowed to just play without any consequences for his lack of improvement. You can’t teach it at this age.

If LeBron isn’t a tireless worker now, a winner now, he probably won’t ever be.

It was LeBron James that shrunk in the moment and cost his team what was a winnable NBA title. There is no reason to blame Erik Spoelstra for that.