Did LeBron James want Pat Riley to fire Erik Spoelstra? Revisiting Heat coach's bumpy start

Erik Spoelstra has won more than 700 regular season games. He has made six trips to the NBA Finals and won two championships. He was named one of the 15 greatest coaches in league history last year. 

Any way you look at it, Spoelstra's tenure in Miami has been a smashing success. But could it have ended before he even completed his third season as a head coach?

It can be easy to forget after everything Spoelstra has accomplished, but at the beginning of the "Heatles" era, there were questions about his ability to lead a team featuring LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh. And some of the doubts may have come from Miami's best player.

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Did LeBron James want the Heat to fire Erik Spoelstra?

Back in 2008, Pat Riley stepped down as the Heat's head coach but maintained his title as team president. He chose Spoelstra to fill the void and he found early success, finishing 43-39 and 47-35 in 2008-09 and 2009-10, respectively.

Expectations changed dramatically ahead of the 2010-11 campaign after Miami acquired James and Bosh in the offseason. The Heat were aiming to win not one, not two, not three... well, you get it. They wanted to win a few rings.

The first season with James, Wade and Bosh didn't start off with a bang. The Heat had a 9-8 record through their first 17 games, and James' infamous bump into Spoelstra during a loss to the Mavericks punctuated what was a rough stretch.

"The bump was absolutely a message," ESPN's Brian Windhorst said of the moment. "LeBron doesn't do that without sending a message. Just how far he was willing to go, I'm not sure. What I remember is, coming in on Monday, wondering how Erik Spoelstra was going to react to a lot of speculation about his job status, and Erik being absolutely as confident as I had ever seen him that entire season.

"That was a huge moment because, while he was certainly projecting it to the media and therefore the public, he was also projecting it to the players."

The drama didn't stop there. In Ian Thomsen's book, "The Soul of Basketball," Riley revealed that James, Wade and Bosh met him in his office the day after that loss. James gave him a not-so-subtle push to replace Spoelstra.

Via ESPN:

"They just said, 'We're not feeling it,' or something like that," Riley told Thomsen. "We talked about the typical things that we have to do, have patience and all of that stuff.

"And I remember LeBron looking at me, and he said, 'Don't you ever get the itch?' I said, 'The itch for what?' He said, 'The itch to coach again?' I said, 'No, I don't have the itch.' He didn't ask any more questions, and I didn't offer any more answers. But I know what it meant, and I always go back and wonder about what he was thinking at that time. He walked out scratching his leg like it was itching."

Riley also told Thomsen that he had to address questions about Spoelstra's status when Miami recruited James during the free agency period.

"They wondered if I was going to be coaching," Riley said. "I said, 'Look, Erik is the head coach, that's it. I support him. I'm not interested in coaching.' The thought was in their mind at times that maybe I would come back and coach, I think.

"But I was truly done, I didn't want to get back into it, and Erik is a hell of a coach. He was coming off two good playoff years, but he had not been coaching three superstars. And then with the whole LeBron effect, it would have been a tough transition for any head coach with two years of experience."

Riley certainly made the right call. James reached the NBA Finals in each of his four seasons with the Heat, winning back-to-back championships in 2012 and 2013.

In the years since he left Miami, James has been highly complimentary of Spoelstra and his impact on the franchise.

"It's been you guys that have changed the narrative or never given Spo his respect because he had D-Wade or he had myself or he had Bosh," James said ahead of the 2020 NBA Finals matchup between the Lakers and Heat. "But a lot of coaches have talent. A lot of coaches have had talent over the course of this league. It's not one.

"It's unfortunate that he hasn't gotten his respect. Every time we talked about Spo when I was there and we talked about how great he prepared us, and we talked about how great it was playing for Spo and things of that nature, you guys always said, 'Well, you have LeBron, you have D-Wade, you have Bosh; any coach can do it.' No, any coach can't do it.

"If any coach could do it, then there would be a lot more champions in this league. There would be a lot more successful coaches."

Erik Spoelstra coaching record with LeBron James

*Lockout shortened regular season from 82 to 66 games