Dubai: Hear the distinctive thump of ball on concrete on any Dubai street and there is a good chance you can peek through a fence and see dozens of Filipinos packed around the edges of an outdoor basketball court, waiting patiently for their chance to play.
Basketball is huge in the Philippines, just as it is among the country’s expats in the UAE. Filipinos line courts from Bur Dubai to Umm Suqeim, from the coolest months to the hottest. Many don basketball apparel emblazoned with the name of NBA teams from the LA Lakers to the New York Knicks. But no team features more prominently than the Miami Heat.
Granted, the back-to-back NBA champions are one of the planet’s most popular teams in any sport — so much so that Heat star LeBron James nicknamed them “The Heatles” due to their popularity as a travelling team.
But it’s more than that to Filipinos, because the man who masterminds it all is one of their own.
Miami head coach Erik Spoelstra is the first Filipino-American to coach in the NBA. He became the first Asian-American coach to win the NBA title a year ago, and this month led his charges — including James, widely considered the world’s best player — to a second straight championship with a seven-game Finals victory against the San Antonio Spurs.
Spoelstra’s mother, Elisa Celino, is from the Philippines town of San Pablo, in the Laguna province. His American father Jon Spoelstra is a former NBA executive.
Spoelstra junior, 42, is immensely proud of his Filipino heritage and visits his mother’s homeland as often as possible. “It staggers our players how popular the NBA is here,” said Spoelstra on his last visit. “I take a lot of pride that I’m the first Fil-American head coach in any American sports league to win a championship.”
But the path to glory wasn’t a simple one for Spoelstra. A star point guard for his home-town University of Portland, he began his coaching career in German youth basketball before following in his father’s footsteps to the backrooms of the NBA when the Heat appointed him the team’s video co-ordinator in 1995.
He slowly worked his way out of the dark video rooms and onto the bench as a Miami assistant coach before, in 2008, then-head coach Pat Riley rewarded Spoelstra’s innovative ideas by appointing him as his own successor.
Two years later, James and fellow Team USA player Chris Bosh joined Dwyane Wade on the Heat roster, making them instant favourites for the championship.
Their first title tilt in 2011 ended in disappointment at the hands of the Dallas Mavericks, but Spoelstra’s intricate offensive systems and swarming defensive schemes were soon getting the best out of his three stars. A 2012 NBA Finals victory against the Oklahoma City Thunder was followed this past season by a 27-game winning streak, the second-longest in history, and a second title.
It was Finals MVP James who grabbed the headlines in the aftermath of the victory. To the rest of the world, he is the star. But for Filipinos at home and in the UAE, it is coach Spoelstra who shines brightest.
