MIAMI — Golden State’s Steve Kerr does not see much of a need to cross the Olympic teaching torch to Miami’s Erik Spoelstra.
In Kerr’s thoughts, Spoelstra was prepared for the looming problem long in the past.
Kerr, the former U.S. Olympic males’s basketball coach, confronted off with Spoelstra, the present U.S. Olympic males’s basketball coach, on Wednesday evening for the first time since the Heat sideline boss was formally employed by USA Basketball to take over the national workforce. Kerr said he has zero doubt that Spoelstra is prepared for the problem and all that comes with it.
“He was a great choice,” Kerr said before Golden State’s 110-96 loss in Miami. “He’s one of the great coaches of all time. Great awareness of what FIBA is about, the difference between coaching a team for seven weeks and coaching one for nine months, all of that stuff. He’s just got his finger on the pulse of it all. He’s going to be great.”
Spoelstra will lead the U.S. males at the 2027 World Cup in Doha, Qatar, and the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics. Kerr led the Americans at the 2023 World Cup, when they completed fourth in Manila, then again on the method to Olympic gold at the Paris Games in 2024. Spoelstra was on Kerr’s employees for both occasions.
Later this weekend in South Florida, the U.S. formally begins its quest to attain the 2027 World Cup. A 12-player workforce assembled for the first two video games on the 12-game qualifying schedule will collect for practices at the University of Miami before flying to Nicaragua to open play Nov. 28. The qualifying video games run through March 2027.
Spoelstra hasn’t reached out to Kerr yet to speak specifics about how he pivoted from NBA pondering to worldwide basketball pondering. He will, at some level.
“I’ve said it before, but I’m just so incredibly grateful for having that opportunity to be on his staff for the last two summers,” Spoelstra said. “The entire staff, we had such an amazing time. It was a life experience. It was Basketball 101. We all grew from it, just from a basketball coaching development experience. It’s the same four lines and two baskets and a basketball, but it’s a different sport, FIBA. And we were humbled in that first year and the second year, I think, the experiences that we had the summer before helped us for that Olympic experience.”
The U.S. males have won the previous 5 Olympic gold medals. Spoelstra will be tasked with extending that streak and saw in Paris how troublesome the job can be — with the Americans needing to rally from a double-digit deficit late to beat Serbia in the semifinals, then maintain off France for the gold medal behind a dazzling show from Stephen Curry.
And when “The Star-Spangled Banner” performed for the Americans that evening in Paris to commemorate their Olympic gold, Kerr turned to Spoelstra and said, “Good luck.” The announcement that Spoelstra was taking over the workforce was more than a 12 months away, but Kerr already appeared to know who the next coach needed to be.
“I was so impressed with Steve just in terms of the way he was able to manage everything,” Spoelstra said. “We all know that there is great pressure. I think he, as part of his genius, he managed that beautifully. Just getting the team, one, to handle all the expectations, and then getting the team to hit the stride at just the right time and be able to handle adversity like we did against Serbia. I think it was just great leadership on his part. That experience will be something I’ll never forget.”
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