Sprung: LeBron James and Erik Spoelstra preach patience for Miami Heat

BROOKLYN – LeBron James doesn’t like losing. Not one bit. His Miami Heat just barely put up 60 points against the Brooklyn Nets on Thursday night in an 86-62 defeat at the Barclays Center. Was he mad? Nope, he was patient.

“We’re just trying to get better and not waste an opportunity to get better,” James said. “We don’t have all our guys playing, but when guys were in the game, they played, worked hard.”

Miami didn’t really work so hard rebounding the basketball – or scoring it, either, for that matter. The Heat were outrebounded on Thursday by a 53-31 margin, and head coach Erik Spoelstra admitted after the game that it was a concern. But with his shirt collar open and his gray suit jacket unbuttoned, Spoelstra didn’t seem worried in the slightest.

After all, his team finished dead last in rebounds per game last season and still won the title in part because of the Heat’s 55.2 percent effective field goal percentage, the best regular season number in league history. Spoelstra’s main message was having a good shootaround Saturday before another preseason game that night against San Antonio.

Spoelstra is focused on his team getting “not good shots, but better shots. Not settle for shots just based on our talent but playing with continuity, unselfishness and precision.” That hasn’t come to fruition just yet, but he knows that ball movement, spacing and patience (he stressed avoiding “throwaway shots”) is what will fuel the Miami offense. “We’re trying to develop better habits.”

The slow and sluggish game did not bother the two-time defending champs, who know that the path to a title is long and laborious. With Chris “Birdman” Andersen, Michael Beasley and Rashard Lewis not playing, the team was thin in the frontcourt. Joel Anthony and Jarvis Varnado combined for a minus-31 and reserve center Justin Hamilton left in the second quarter with what appeared to be a broken nose, with blood running from his nostrils like a broken, leaky faucet.

Spoelstra said his status would be updated when the team returned to Miami. Patience.

As the media entered the Heat locker room before Thursday’s game, the first player you noticed would not even play in the game. In fact, he won’t be playing in a game anytime soon.

But that didn’t prevent Greg Oden from being a noticeable presence. His huge 7-foot, 273-pound frame was hidden under his white, long-sleeved Heat T-shirt as he pedaled on a large white stationary bike. As he contorted his body to comfortably ride the bike, you could not help but notice the sleeve covering his left knee under his black shorts. That knee is the reason why the former top overall pick has not met his incredibly lofty expectations as an NBA player.

He had three total major microfracture surgeries on both his knees over the course of his time with the Portland Trail Blazers that limited him to 82 total games in five seasons. The most recent NBA game in which Oden logged minutes was on Dec. 5, 2009.

The media, including this reporter, asks Spoelstra about Oden’s progress all the time. But the coach was very measured and firm in his belief that Oden will be back to help the team’s interior when the time is right.

“It’s natural, I understand the interest, but there’s too much interest in the day-to-day report,” Spoelstra told Sheridan Hoops. “It’s not about that right now.”

Right now, it’s about getting the Heat ready for eight months of basketball separating the team from its third straight championship. And right now, that involves resting players like Andersen, Lewis and Dwyane Wade. The focus is not on wins and losses but good practices and shootarounds, getting good reps and instilling proper technique.

Miami has an older roster, especially in its frontcourt. Several players probably won’t be able to endure the rigors of an 82-game season without being hurt. That’s where Oden comes in. And Oden is slowly working on his return, according to a teammate.

“He’s around four times a day icing his knee, working on getting stronger, building himself up,” said rookie forward Eric Griffin, who will almost certainly not make the team’s roster.

As an injured player, Oden was not made available to the rabid, ravenous media, but his coach laid out the big man’s long-term plan to recovery and ultimate contribution to the team.

“When we recruited him in July, we set a very specific plan for him,” Spoelstra said, sounding like a college coach for a second. “In August, once we signed him, there was a big picture in mind. And so, from that regard, he is far ahead of schedule. But we’re still taking this extremely patiently.”

Patience was the clear theme of the evening on the Miami side. Spoelstra saw James and Nets forward Paul Pierce wage a few intense one-on-one “skirmishes,” as the coach put it, and hoped that intensity would soon last an entire game, rather than in sporadic times during a game.

That will come in time, especially when Miami and Brooklyn play, since it seems like the Heat-Celtics rivalry has transferred south to the borough of kings.

Spoelstra finished his pregame quote about Oden, but he might has well have been referring to the direction of the entire franchise here in mid-October.

“We’re going to move very diligently, judiciously forward and still think big picture right now,” he said. “This is way too early in the process to get ahead of ourselves or allow people to get ahead of themselves.”

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Shlomo Sprung loves advanced statistics and the way they explain what happens on the court. He is also the web editor of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. A 2011 graduate of Columbia University’s Journalism School, he has previously worked for the New York Knicks, The Sporting News, Business Insider and other publications. His website is SprungOnSports.com. You should follow him on Twitter.