Miami Heat head coach Erik Spoelstra admits to ‘serious mental error’ that led to defeat against the Detroit Pistons
By Matias Grez, CNN
(CNN) — Miami Heat head coach Erik Spoelstra admitted that his own “horrendous mistake” cost the team in its 123-121 defeat to the Detroit Pistons in the NBA Cup on Tuesday.
After the Pistons leveled the scores at 121-121 with a Jalen Duren alley-oop, a frustrated Spoelstra, who has led the Heat to two NBA championships, called a timeout that the Heat didn’t have with 1.1 seconds left in overtime.
That resulted in a technical foul and the Pistons being awarded a free throw, which Malik Beasley sunk to make it 122-121. Beasley then made one of his next two free throws after being intentionally fouled following the restart.
“I just made a serious mental error there at the end,” Spoelstra told reporters after the game. “That’s on me. I feel horrible about it.
“There’s really no excuse for that, I’m 17 years in. We had talked about it in the huddle, I knew that we didn’t have anything. I just got emotional and reactive on that and I made just a horrendous mistake there at the end.
“It’s a shame because we really fought back.”
The Heat trailed by as many as 14 points in the fourth quarter but went on a surge down the stretch, led by the blistering shooting of Tyler Herro, to force overtime.
Herro finished with 40 points, including a tied career-best 10 three-pointers.
“You don’t want it to come down to a mental error like that,” Spoelstra added. “You would have just liked to see this go double overtime. That’s the kind of game it felt like.
“It deserved to go double OT and not have somebody get in the way of that – and unfortunately, even as a veteran coach, I got in the way of that.”
For the Pistons, Beasley and Cade Cunningham finished with 21 points, with Jaden Ivey adding 19 and Tobias Harris 18.
Matches played in the NBA Cup, an in-season tournament introduced last year, still count towards the regular season standings.
The semifinals and final of the NBA Cup will be played in Las Vegas.
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