Coach Spoelstra’s Whiteboard Magic Fans Heat’s Flames

Erik Spoelstra Heat-Warriors

Getty Miami Heat coach Erik Spoelstra looks on during a game against the Golden State Warriors.

Good teams win road games — its an adage old as time in sports circles, mostly because its true. But the Miami Heat, who finished just a few points shy of an NBA Finals berth last season, have pretty much been doing the opposite so far this season.

Entering Sunday’s away bout with Trae Young and the Atlanta Hawks, the crew from South Beach had posted a woeful 1-7 record outside of FTX Arena’s cozy confines. Along the way, they put up just 104.6 points per 100 possessions as the road team, the third-worst mark league-wide.

And while they only notched 106 in the ATL, a suffocating defensive front, an everything-but-scoring gem from Tyler Herro and Bam Adebayo, Caleb Martin and Dewayne Dedmon (!!) combing for 65 points on just 39 shot attempts helped pave the way for road win No. 2, and their first such victory in more than a month.

In the wake of the big W, Martin revealed that head coach Erik Spoelstra’s pre-game motivational tactics played a big role in getting himself and his teammates revved up and committed to righting the ship.


Heat Get the Whiteboard Bump in Atlanta

During his postgame media availability, Martin — who has been on a tear over the last eight games, averaging 15.5 PPG, 6.3 RPG and 1.5 SPG on 55/47/82 shooting splits — credited consistent effort for Sunday’s reversal of road fortunes.

“I think we just [played] two complete halves, for the most part,” Martin told Bally Sports Sun after the contest. “Obviously, we had some slippage a little bit in the first half. But I think, overall, this is probably… in terms of two halves put together, our best game so far.”

As well as he and several of his teammates performed, though, Martin made it clear that Coach Spo played a major part in getting their competitive juices flowing, too.

“Coach let us know that — he put that on the board… 1-7, which I didn’t even realize,” Martin said. “I know that we were struggling on the road but just to put it in perspective for us, to see it on the board, is pretty disgusting to us. To see how good of a team we are and that we’re 1-7 on the road… and not only that we’ve been losing on the road but how we’ve been losing on the road; they’ve all been winnable games.”

With all of that rolling around their heads, Martin and Co. weren’t about to let another one slip away.

“I think we just made sure that we came in with better intentions and tried to play a complete, full game today with two halves.”


Have Heat Cracked the Trae Young Code?

Young may be one of the Association’s top scorers this season in terms of raw PPG, but the Heat managed to hold him in check on Sunday. The two-time All-Star scored 22 points — six below his season average — versus Miami while shooting just 4-for-16 from the floor and 1-for-8 from deep.

He did contribute in other ways, dropping 14 dimes and snagging five boards, but the Heat’s ability to take him completely out of his game played a big role in the win.

Turns out, this is nothing new for Coach Spo’s crew:

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