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Erik Spoelstra of the Miami Heat has emerged as the choice to become the next coach of the U.S. men’s basketball team for the 2027 World Cup in Qatar and 2028 Los Angeles Olympics, two people with knowledge of the situation said Thursday.
Spoelstra and USA Basketball have yet to completely finalize any agreement, said the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity because no public announcement has been scheduled.
Spoelstra would be replacing Steve Kerr, who coached the Americans in the last Olympic cycle and led the team to a gold medal at the Paris Games. The U.S. men have won the last five Olympic gold medals, and Spoelstra was on the staff that won in Paris last summer. He told The Associated Press after the gold-medal game in Paris that he “would be honored” if USA Basketball asked him to take over the program.
Spoelstra would also become the first Heat coach to have the distinction of being the Olympic coach.
The move comes not long after USA Basketball finalized an agreement to make Duke coach Kara Lawson the coach of the women’s national team for the Olympic cycle through the Los Angeles Games.
Spoelstra — whose father, Jon Spoelstra, was an NBA executive with Portland, Denver and New Jersey — was a standout high school guard in Oregon, then played at the University of Portland, where he was the West Coast Conference’s freshman of the year. After college, he spent two years playing professionally in Germany before the Heat called with an offer to hire the 24-year-old for a job in their video room — a deal that got done about a month before Miami hired Pat Riley to take over in 1995.
Spoelstra is entering his 18th season as coach of the Heat, making him the coach with the longest current tenure in the league after the retirement of San Antonio’s Gregg Popovich. He’s won two NBA titles as head coach, won another as an assistant under Pat Riley in 2006 and was part of USA Basketball’s coaching staffs under Kerr in both the World Cup in 2023 and the Paris Olympics in 2024.
The 54-year-old Spoelstra is 787-572 in his 17 seasons with Miami.
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AP NBA: https://apnews.com/hub/NBA
