Miami Heat coach Erik Spoelstra admits to ‘serious mental error’ that led to loss to Detroit Pistons

CNN
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Miami Heat head coach Erik Spoelstra admitted his own “terrible mistake” cost the team in its 123-121 loss to the Detroit Pistons in NBA Cup on Tuesday.

After the Pistons tied the score at 121-121 on 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.

It resulted in a technical foul and the Pistons were awarded a free throw that Malik Beasley sank to make it 122-121. Beasley then made one of his next two free throws after being intentionally fouled on the restart.

“I just made a serious mental mistake there at the end,” Spoelstra told reporters after the game. “It’s up to me. I feel terrible about it.

“There’s really no excuse for it, I’m 17 years in.” We had talked about it in a pinch, I knew we had nothing. I just got emotional and reactive to it and I just made a horrible 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 Tyler Herro’s blistering shooting, to force overtime.

Herro finished with 40 points, including a career-best 10 three-pointers.

“You don’t want it to come down to a mental error like that,” Spoelstra added. “You just wanted to see this go double overtime. That was the kind of game it felt like.

“It deserved to go double OT and not have anybody 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.

Games played in the NBA Cup, an in-season tournament introduced last year, still count toward the regular-season standings.

The semifinals and finals of the NBA Cup are played in Las Vegas.