Coach Erik Spoelstra Thinks Heat Will Be a Better Team This Year

Miami Heat coach Erik Spoelstra recently said that he believes the team will be much better during the 2025-26 season then they were during the 2024-25 season. 

It's hard to believe, but Spoelstra will be going into his 18th season as the Heat coach. The team has done an awful lot of winning under his care. Under coach Spo the Heat have an in-season winning percentage of .579 and a playoff winning percentage of .570. 

Things were different in 2024-2025. Franchise leader Jimmy Butler made waves until the team felt that they had no choice but to trade him to the Golden State Warriors. The Heat snuck into the playoffs despite finishing 8 games under .500 but were swept in four games. 

Spoelstra thinks things will go much better this year, telling the South Florida Sun Sentinel:

"Hopefully, we're going to be a lot better than last year. We had to really navigate quite a few things during the season. But we did make the playoffs. The playoffs did not go how we wanted it to go, but the league is tough. We pride ourselves on finding a way to compete for a championship every single year, so that’s what our standard is, that’s what we’re aiming to do this year, and I think we have a good group. We have an exciting group of young players like Pelle. And we have experience, and have that competitive drive that we look for. So it’s a matter of putting it together and getting out there and competing for it."