LeBron James Owes All of His Championships to Chip Kelly

In a piece on the prevalence of the three-pointer in the modern NBA that went up on ESPN yesterday, there’s this little tidbit on Erik Spoelstra’s coaching that brought LeBron his first ring in 2012:

Inspired by Chip Kelly, who emphasized speed over size as the football coach of the Oregon Ducks, Spoelstra had spent the entire season talking about “position-less” basketball. But he didn’t turn his words into reality until that night in May.

The first line there links back to a piece from a few days before Christmas in 2011. A few months after the Heat lost to the Mavericks in the 2011 NBA Finals, Spoelstra found himself looking for answers. How could he push his team to the next level? He found those answers in Chip Kelly’s offense:

Erik Spoelstra was on the sidelines when he had his moment of clarity.

Only, it came on a football field in Eugene, Ore., and with an Oregon Ducks logo, not a Miami Heat one, on his collared shirt … Spoelstra stood on the sidelines at the Ducks’ training camp, trying to absorb any insight into the contrarian mind of famed Ducks football coach Chip Kelly.

This was the first stop on what Spoelstra refers to as his lockout-induced sabbatical, a trip born of summer boredom. After six weeks of cathartic film marathons in his Miami office, Spoelstra finally had enough, so he mapped out a tour around the country to pick the brains of the collegiate coaching ranks.

“I had a lot of time on my hands and I didn’t just want to sit there,” Spoelstra said of the time he spent trying to figure out what went wrong in the previous year’s finals. And with that time, Chip Kelly helped unlock what Spoelstra was looking for:

Over the course of a two-hour conversation on the sidelines, Kelly explained in detail the thinking behind his wildly successful up-tempo spread offense. Spoelstra hung on Kelly’s every word. Not just because he is a Ducks fan. But because it was all coming together. Finally.

As Kelly spoke, Spoelstra’s mind was consumed with one idea:

“Could a no-huddle spread offense work in the NBA?”

So there it is. Until LeBron wins a title under a coach other than Spoelstra, he’ll owe all of his rings and glory to Chip Kelly. That is, if you believe Eric Spoelstra was more than a pre-David Blatt figurehead while LeBron really ran the show. But maybe people shouldn’t be worried about Chip returning to college if the NFL doesn’t work out. There’s always a job in the NBA.

[h/t seedutton on r/Eagles]