Spo:
1) "Kel'el needs to stack good days."
2) "Young players subconsciously don't play well when they don't get the minutes they think they deserve."
Dwyane Wade:
1) "First part I'm in lock step" with."
2) "The second part, I don't get that...I don't think he's intentionally trying to play bad...I don't think this kid is going out there subconsciously trying to sabotage his own minutes and his own career....but I agree with Spo on the stacking of the days...but the second part UD, I ain't rockin' with that part."
Udonis Haslem:
2) "Nah, that makes absolutely no sense."
Steve Kerr said the day after an on-court argument with Asshole Draymond Green, "That wasn't one of my finest moments." I don't think this was one of Spo's finest moments. After he gets going on the "second part", I can see the wheels turning, he pauses, "uh", he wants to stop himself, he doesn't want to go there, but...he does.
Both Wade and Haslem acknowledge what they believe (they don't know) is Ware's frustration with the yo-yo'ing minutes. That is a frustration that both have seen first hand: Hassan Whiteside, Dewayne Dedmon are just two that come to mind. I can understand if Ware was frustrated with Spoelstra's exasperated benching for the second half against Boston that may have cost Miami the game (Jaime Jaquez, Jr. and Davion Mitchell were out, making for a depleted bench). I see and hear frustration in Spoelstra, frustration with Ware to be sure, frustration also at a blown 20-point lead and an exquisitely painful loss to the franchise that his Idol, Pat Riley, hates with a fathomless hate. I see and hear those frustrations boiling over in Spoelstra's post-game comments.
As Wade and Haslem understand Ware's frustration, let us also understand Spoelstra's frustrations.
-Eleven and a half years without a superstar (apologies to Jimmy Butler III, but he was not that), much less two or three.
-Eleven and a half years of 44-38 (avg.) every year.
-Frustration with being given mediocre personnel every year, and now mediocre personnel promised for two and a half more years.
-Frustration in a word with Pat Riley. I glean it, I do not know it. We do know that Spoelstra went to Riley after the playoff debacle against Sensitive City and bluntly stated the need for a New Miami of speed and pace. I have imagined myself as Spoelstra--the highest degree of empathy that one person can extend to another--and I have imagined myself walking away after sixteen years. Things are not going to change under Pat Riley, they are damn well not going to change for the better for another two and a half years. At least taking a break, pausing my coaching of this franchise, if coaching elsewhere is, to the real Spoelstra, unthinkable. Riley deposed Stan Van Gundy during the season. Wayne Huizinga brought in Dave Wannstedt to help Jimmy Johnson when JJ needed relief.
-Frustration with Ware. This is not the first time, nor the first that Spoelstra has been public about it. Training camp this pre-season: a lack of "professionalism"; a lack of dedication in a player who voiced in college his uncertainty that basketball was the be-all-end-all of his work life.
-And let us acknowledge two personal sources of frustration for Spoelstra.
-Frustration with his ex-wife last season. He was tilted, that is fact, Riley acknowledged it in his end-of-season. Spoelstra made uncharacteristic mistakes last season.
-Frustration with his house fire. Remember? The man's house burnt to the ground. Now, Spoelstra can put on the stiff upper lip and say all he wants that "The Spoelstras are resilient", but shockingly losing one's home and the entire contents, can we understand that that would be a stressor in our lives? He is human as we all are.
As the post title indicates, all of this minutiae is overwhelmed by the revelation this week of The Big Picture. Behold! Remove the minutiae and Spoelstra is still left with a roster that cannot contend for a championship. But this time of year my friends, this is the best, the most interesting time of the NBA year. It is welcome, temporary distraction from far more ominous public occurrences...