Erik Spoelstra sees the possibilities of what the new-look Miami Heat can be

MIAMI (AP) — Klay Thompson didn't sleep particularly well before his first training camp practice with the Miami Heat.

It wasn't nerves, wasn't a bad hotel room, wasn't anything like that.

The problem was Erik Spoelstra. And it was a good problem to have.

The Miami coach — entering his 19th season with the Heat, by far the longest current tenure of any coach in the NBA — always addresses his team on the night before the start of camp. And what Spoelstra said in this season's kickoff speech had Thompson so fired up that getting rest proved difficult, if not impossible.

“He cares,” Thompson said. “And it’s good to be around a head coach who doesn’t mind to kind of get into you. He respects your work, but he also wants to get the most out of you. And he doesn’t believe in ‘you’re past your prime' or ‘your best years are behind you.’ He believes that you can still be effective at any stage you want — as long as you’re willing to work.”

That part, the commitment to the work, never changes. But a run to the NBA Finals in 2023 was followed up by first-round exits in 2024 and 2025. And last season, when Miami wildly changed its offense but didn't have anywhere near enough chemistry, the playoffs were missed entirely.

So, change did happen. Norman Powell, Tyler Herro, Jaime Jaquez Jr. and Kel'el Ware — four of last season's top seven overall scorers for Miami — are gone, with Giannis Antetokounmpo, Tim Hardaway Jr., Bobby Portis and Thompson in their place. And based on early returns, it's easy to see why Spoelstra is firing people up when he talks about this season.

“We all know what we’re here for," Spoelstra said. "Everybody understands what they’re signing up for. There’s not any confusion about the agenda. There’s more an excitement about trying to commit to doing something collectively that’s really hard to do and hopefully ends in something so special at the end of the year.

“You want to have that feeling as a coaching staff and as a front office, you also want the players to have the same type of feeling,” he added. "And it’s early right now, but it just feels like those things are aligned.”

Spoelstra's story is well-known. He grew up in Oregon and idolized Jack Ramsay among others, played college basketball, was in the game when Loyola Marymount star Hank Gathers tragically died, got hired in the Heat video room before team president Pat Riley even came to Miami to coach, eventually became an assistant under Riley and then was the hand-picked successor to become head coach when Riley retired in 2008. In 2027, he'll coach the U.S. team at the Basketball World Cup and in 2028 he'll lead the American men into the Los Angeles Olympics.

He'll be in the Hall of Fame one day and it's easy to see why. In 18 seasons under Spoelstra, the Heat have finished below the .500 mark only three times. He's taken six teams to the NBA Finals, the first four of those when LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh formed a Big Three in Miami.

“I can guarantee you that Erik Spoelstra is going to be motivated going into this year," Bosh said. "He’s going to have a plan. They’re going to score a lot of points. And I think Giannis will love playing that way.”

With Antetokounmpo now playing alongside Bam Adebayo, longtime NBA coach and Basketball Hall of Famer Doc Rivers — who coached Antetokounmpo in Milwaukee — sees parallels between the James-Wade-Bosh era of Heat basketball and what's possible in this one.

“I look at Miami and I look at Spo and Bam and Giannis, I mean, that’s a hell of a Big Three,” Rivers said. “Anybody can go get the stars. The key — great organizations know this, and Miami is one of those — is figuring out how to build around them when your resources are lacking. Every person you sign has to be the right person. And if I was going to pick anybody to do that, Pat Riley and Spo would be at the top of the list.”

Most decisions have to be right as well, and the one with the offense that Spoelstra made a year ago might pay huge dividends now. Miami started playing very fast, shooting earlier in the shot clock, trying to get the ball over halfcourt in a couple seconds, putting constant pressure on defenses.

It seems tailor-made to fit Antetokounmpo's game.

“When you have a coach like Erik Spoelstra, it makes the job much easier,” Antetokounmpo said. “You know that you’re going to be in the right places and you’re going to be successful when you play.”

The Eastern Conference will be loaded this season, playoff spots will be difficult to grab and Miami — even after some preseason glimmers of great — can't say with any certainty yet about how the season will go.

But Spoelstra is energized. His team is noticing. Excitement seems high, and that tends to mean very good things are coming in Miami.

“We don’t want to reinvent guys. We just want to add to (them)," Spoelstra said. “And hopefully we can make our guys better when they come into this building, but also just really accentuate what they already do and maximize that and put it all together where everybody’s maximizing each other’s strengths. The possibilities for us are exciting.”

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Miami Heat head coach Erik Spoelstra talks t0 forward Myron Gardner (15) and guard Ryan Conwell during the second half of an NBA preseason basketball game against the Minnesota Timberwolves Saturday, Oct. 10, 2026, in Miami. (AP Photo/Marta Lavandier)

Miami Heat head coach Erik Spoelstra gestures during the first half of an NBA preseason basketball game against the Minnesota Timberwolves Saturday, Oct. 10, 2026, in Miami. (AP Photo/Marta Lavandier)

Miami Heat head coach Erik Spoelstra watches as players do drills during NBA basketball training camp, Tuesday, Sept. 29, 2026, in Boca Raton, Fla. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky)

Miami Heat head coach Erik Spoelstra gestures during the second half of an NBA preseason basketball game against the New Orleans Pelicans Thursday, Oct. 8, 2026, in Miami. (AP Photo/Marta Lavandier)

Miami Heat head coach Erik Spoelstra applauds at the end of the second half of an NBA preseason basketball game against the New Orleans Pelicans Thursday, Oct. 8, 2026, in Miami. (AP Photo/Marta Lavandier)

STOCKHOLM (AP) — American economists Robert E. Hall and Michael Woodford won the Nobel Memorial Prize in economics Monday for their work on models that have helped governments and central banks manage economic shocks, such as energy crises and inflation.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced the winners in Stockholm, noting that their work created the theoretical foundation to better understand how consumers decide whether to save or spend, insights that make it easier for policymakers worldwide to stabilize economies after fluctuations.

“The laureates’ research has made it possible to manage major macroeconomic crises far more effectively than before,” the Nobel committee wrote in a paper explaining the economists' work. “It has been hugely beneficial during the pandemic and the energy crises of recent years.”

Hall is affiliated with Stanford University in California, and Woodford with Columbia University in New York.

Woodford spoke to the committee by phone from New York: “It’s a tremendous honor. It’s a surprise.”

For decades, governments responded to economic shocks by following the Depression-era prescriptions of the British economist John Maynard Keynes: Intervene in the economy by lowering interest rates and taxes and hiking government spending, thereby encouraging consumers and businesses to spend and invest and help restart growth.

“This is the Keynesian recipe and it worked well — until it didn’t,” said Timo Boppart of the Nobel economics committee.

Policymakers had thought economic management involved simple trade-offs — unemployment, for instance, would stay low at a time of high inflation and rise when inflation fell. But the “ stagflation ’’ of the 1970s — when the world economy experienced simultaneous high inflation and high unemployment — proved the formula was simplistic.

Some economists argued that government attempts to intervene in the economy were doomed to fail. But Hall and Woodford, in separate contributions, set about improving the Keynesian model to take into account how consumers and businesses actually make decisions about whether to invest and spend.

“Economic outcomes are the result of millions of decisions made at the microlevel by households and businesses,’’ the Nobel committee wrote. “Using models based upon this approach, rather than simply studying the economy from a macro perspective, like a bird’s eye view," Hall and Woodford’s research “generated a paradigm shift in the theory of stabilization policy.”

Hall studied the way that consumers' decisions about whether and how much to spend depend on what they expect their future income to be.

“If they are optimistic, they will consume more than if they are pessimistic,’’ the committee wrote. But consumer expectations can change unexpectedly as new information about the economy comes in. Hall found that forecasting future consumer spending is virtually impossible.

The idea that consumption is mostly unpredictable “is not good news for forecasters, or policymakers,” Olivier Blanchard, who was chief economist at the International Monetary Fund during the 2008 financial crisis, said by email. “But it is news they must take into account in thinking about the effects of policy.”

Hall also explored the idea that some households are so strapped financially that they can’t borrow or tap savings in response to economic changes. In a 1982 paper with the economist Fredric Mishkin, Hall found that around 80% of households made spending decisions based on their expectations for the future “while the rest lived hand to mouth," the committee wrote.

“The prize is for research that pushes our understanding of macroeconomics from the bottom up, from families and firms making decisions over time, while looking ahead,” Ivan Werning, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said in an email.

Woodford’s research established that businesses make decisions about prices based on where they think interest rates will go in the future.

“If the business believes that its competitors’ prices and its own costs will increase, it is best to set a higher price than it would with the opposite expectation,” the Nobel committee wrote. “Businesses’ decisions are thus also governed by their expectations."

Therefore, central banks such as the U.S. Federal Reserve, which set short-term interest rates, should provide “clear and credible communication about how they reason and what they plan to do." Central banks have responded to this insight by working harder to explain what they are doing.

The new Fed chair, Kevin Warsh, has said the trend toward such “forward guidance” went too far. He's trying to scale back how much the U.S. central bank talks about its thinking and its intentions.

Woodford's research also offered guidance on how central banks should respond to energy price shocks — like the one that followed the U.S. and Israeli attack on Iran in February — that can both feed inflation and send unemployment higher.

“Unlike the traditional Keynesian models, Woodford’s model recommends a cooling measure, such as increased interest rates, to avoid uncontrolled inflation,” the Nobel committee wrote. “His insight has made it possible to respond to recent supply shocks more effectively than during the oil crises of the 1970s.”

During the phone call broadcast at a news conference, Woodford said his work has stressed “the understanding of the people who are in the markets and making decisions about spending.”

The winners did not immediately respond to requests for comment from The Associated Press.

The economics prize is formally known as the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. The central bank established it in 1968 as a memorial to Nobel, the 19th-century Swedish businessman and chemist who invented dynamite and established the five Nobel Prizes.

Nobel purists stress that the economics prize is technically not a Nobel Prize, but it is always presented together with the others on Dec. 10, the anniversary of Nobel’s death in 1896.

Nobel honors were announced last week in medicine, physics, chemistry, literature and peace.

Monday’s award was the second Nobel win for a Stanford University professor this year. Dr. Karl Deisseroth shared the medicine prize with Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel for their work that led to a tool that uses light to help unravel how the brain works.

The prize money this year is 12 million Swedish kronor (about $1.2 million), whether for an individual, small group of laureates or organization.

Dazio reported from Berlin, and Wiseman reported from Washington. Associated Press Writer Wyatte Grantham-Philips in Chicago contributed to this report.

AP Nobel Prizes: https://apnews.com/hub/nobel-prizes

Portraits of Robert E. Hall and Michael Woodford are shown on the screen as they are announced as the laureates of the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm, Sweden, Monday, Oct. 12, 2026. (Anders Wiklund/TT News Agency via AP)

Portraits of Robert E. Hall and Michael Woodford are shown on the screen as they are announced as the laureates of the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm, Sweden, Monday, Oct. 12, 2026. (Anders Wiklund/TT News Agency via AP)

Portraits of Robert E. Hall and Michael Woodford are shown on the screen as they are announced as the laureates of the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm, Sweden, Monday, Oct. 12, 2026. (Anders Wiklund/TT News Agency via AP)

FILE - A bust of Alfred Nobel on display following a press conference to announce the Nobel Committee for Physiology or Medicine at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, on Oct. 3, 2022. (Henrik Montgomery/TT News Agency via AP, File)

FILE - A Nobel medal is held up during a ceremony in New York, Dec. 8, 2020. (Angela Weiss/Pool Photo via AP, File)