Erik Spoelstra causes a technical foul due to an illegal timeout, which secures the Pistons victory against the Miami Heat.
A dramatic evening in the NBA ended with an unfortunate mistake by Miami Heat head coach Erik Spoelstra. In overtime of the game against the Detroit Pistons, Spoelstra called a timeout with 1.1 seconds left, which his team no longer had.
That decision resulted in a technical foul, which gave the Pistons the winning free throw. Malik Beasley converted this and secured the Pistons a 123-121 victory on the opening night of the NBA Cup.
“I feel terrible”
“I made a serious mental mistake at the end,” Spoelstra admitted after the game. “That’s on me. I feel terrible about it.” The Heat had recently led 121-119 on a basket by Tyler Herro with just 1.8 seconds left on the clock.
But after a Pistons timeout, Cade Cunningham made a perfectly executed throw-in, which Jalen Duren completed with a dunk.
Emotions overwhelm the coach
Spoelstra then stormed onto the field angrily and called for a timeout. “There’s really no excuse for this,” he said. “I’ve been here for 17 years. We had talked about it in the time off, I knew we had no more. I just got emotional and reactive and ended up making a terrible mistake. It’s a shame.”
A mishap despite an impressive career
Despite an impressive career that includes two NBA championships and a gold medal as an assistant coach for the U.S. team, Spoelstra made a mistake usually attributed to a rookie. This marred the outstanding performance of Tyler Herro, who scored 40 points and made ten three-pointers.
“You don’t want it to come down to a mental error like that,” Spoelstra said, pausing. “Yes, you would have just liked to see it go into double extra time. This was the type of game that deserved to go to double OT, not someone standing in the way of it. Unfortunately, as an experienced coach, it was me who stood in the way.”
