INDIANA - At a guest appearance on the Bill Simmons podcast last April 2017, Kevin Durant described head coach Erik Spoelstra as "definitely underrated" and "one of the best coaches in the league the last six years."
Unfortunately, the lack of appreciation for Spoelstra is a common sentiment around the league, a mystifying thought considering that coach Spo is a two-time champion with a stellar won-lost record across 11 years - 59 percent in the regular season (886-523) and 60.2 percent in the playoffs (118-71).
In Miami, however, Spoelstra is not only loved and appreciated. He has just been extended.
According to ESPN's Adrian Wojranowski, coach Spo has agreed to a four-year contract extension that would keep the Filipino-American on the Heat sidelines through the 2024-25 season.
So instead of potentially becoming a lame duck coach entering his 12th season without a new deal, Spo is actually a live wire, a re-energized general rewarded with a fresh mandate to march into the Eastern Conference with legitimate championship aspirations.

Terms of the new contract were not divulged but here's what we know.
Spoelstra made $3 million a year on his previous contract extension in 2016. And he is currently the second-longest tenured head coach in the NBA, behind only to the irascible Gregg Popovich, who charges into the 2019-20 season as the leader of the San Antonio Spurs for the 24th straight year.
After a productive four-year college stint at the University of Portland where he averaged 9.2 points and 4.4 assists in 112 games from 1988 to 1992, Spo spent two years as a player-assistant coach of TuS Hurten of the German league.
In 1995, Spoelstra began his career with the Heat as a video coordinator. Two years later, he was promoted as one of the assistant coaches to the legendary Pat Riley, a position he held until 2008.
He might not have inherited the electricity and celebrity aura of his mentor, but Spo was ready to wear the big boy pants when Riley bequeathed him the golden throne in April 2018.
Spoelstra is a hybrid, a product of the marriage between the new technology of the modern NBA and the old school techniques he learned from Riley. He is max effort performer, meticulous in his preparation, fastidious in his desire for play execution.

BUT WHY THE LINGERING DOUBTS?
Because misguided souls stubbornly insist that Miami's four finals trips and two NBA titles wouldn't have happened without LeBron James.
It's a stupid hypothesis, of course. It's like saying BMWs wouldn't have crawled the earth had Karl Benz not invented the automobile.
Look, Michelangelo can paint a masterpiece with substandard tools. But basketball is different in a way that a coach needs gifted players as tools to succeed.
Even if the 2019 Gilas team had a Hall-of-Fame NBA coach, it would still have probably gone 0-5 in the recent World Cup simply because the hastily assembled team lacked world-class performers.
I don't care how much incense Phil Jackson burned or how thick his Sun Tzu wisdom was, but he wouldn't have won 11 rings without Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen in Chicago and Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant in Los Angeles.
Red Auerbach is an icon in Boston, but he ain't lighting nine championship cigars without Bill Russell and Bob Cousy.
Coach Pop is a genius but let's not ignore the fact that he had David Robinson, Tim Duncan, Manu Ginobili, Tony Parker, Sean Elliott and Bruce Bowen with which to build a dynasty around.
So why is coaching LeBron, an insecure 250-pound crybaby, being held against Spoelstra?
You tell me.
But this I can tell you. Without LeBron, a then 38-year old Spo guided the the Heat to the playoffs in his first two seasons as top dog.
And in the five years since LeBron conveniently left Miami to tandem with Kyrie Irving in his return to Cleveland, Spo guided the Heat to the postseason twice and missed the 2016-17 playoffs train only by a mere one game.
Spoelstra also weathered the kind of turmoil that would have broken a lesser mortal. He lost Chris Bosh to blood clots, dealt with the drama of Dwyane Wade's departure, return and eventual retirement tour, and Spo had to constantly appease the mercurial Hassan Whiteside, a man-child who was mercifully traded to Portland this past July.
Harold Kushner penned a 1981 best-seller about "bad things" happening to "good people."
That unfair life reality doesn't apply to coach Spo.
In June 2016, Spo bought a 5,400-square foot mansion worth $2.6 million at Coconut Grove, home of Miami's rich and famous. A month later, he married former Miami Heat cheerleader and the love of his life, Nikki Sapp.
In March of 2018, Spoelstra became a father for the first time when Santiago Ray - a six-pound, eight-ounce, and 19- inch bundle of joy - was born.
And now, he has a new contract, a validation of his splendid body of work. As an added bonus, he gets to oversee the remaining prime years of All-Star acquisition Jimmy Butler.
Burn the book. Good things do happen to good people, too.
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