re: Coaching Prospect: Dan Craig. Get on board the hype train.

A couple of things. I love that this guy started from the bottom. Spoelstra and Nick Nurse are a couple of coaches with a ton of recent success, with arguably the two best "cultures" in the league, who have taken a long and grueling journey to get where they are. This is a great article with a really good Spoelstra quote:

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“DC is much like myself, he started at the bottom,” said Spoelstra. “Learning the business from the video room of the Miami Heat is different, to say the least. The workload, the expectations, everything behind the scenes — it’s grunt work. It’s not for everybody. We’ve had a lot of people that quit and said this just wasn’t for them, but those that have been able to survive it end up gaining such an incredible wealth of knowledge in this profession at all levels. That’s scouting, that’s player development, that’s strategy tactics. (Craig) is extremely polished now, he’s done basically everything, including coaching at Sioux Falls (Miami’s G-League affiliate) and he’s somebody that I lean on a lot. I lean on him like he’s a head coach, but he’s also one of my closest friends.”

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Regarding Miami's conditioning program, that's something I've been reading a lot about. This is a great article that is worth reading the whole way through. There are a ton of great quotes throughout:

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Waiters trimmed his body fat percentage by nearly five percent from the start of the season to now.

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Each player has specific goals that are customized for them, but the team goal is for everyone to fall under 10 percent body fat. What happens if a player doesn’t meet his goal? When asked, one Heat player laughed and said he didn’t know because every player on the roster met their goals – mainly because they were too scared to find out the consequences.

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In addition to working hard in the gym and on the court, the team tries to help players eat right. Breakfast is provided to the players every day and, on gamedays, lunch and a pre-game spread is also available. Players are encouraged to eat home-cooked meals as opposed to going out to restaurants, and they’re taught to be conscious of what they’re putting in their body. These lessons are especially important for young players or former D-League players since they’re accustomed to eating cheap foods (AKA fast food and processed junk).

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over the years, they’ve been willing to take risks on players who had weight issues – from Dexter Pittman to Eddy Curry to Shaquille O’Neal. When Curry was in Miami, he lost 100 lbs. and got back to his high school weight.

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[James Johnson] had the biggest transformation of any player this season, losing nearly 40 lbs. and dropping his body fat percentage by eight percent.

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[Wayne Ellington] weighed 222 pounds with a body fat percentage of 12 percent. Last month, he said he’s at 203 pounds and 6.5 percent body fat.

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One former player told a story about Dwyane Wade reporting to camp weighing around 230 lbs. and telling Riley that he bulked up. Riley responded, “No, you’re fat.”

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Obviously the reason I posted all of these quotes about body fat and diet is because Zion has been out of shape since he got here. It would be great to have a culture that holds everyone accountable for taking great care of their body. However, I found a Heat fan's opinion on reddit that was interesting to me:

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But, underlying this is the fact that first time players in the Heat system seems to become more prone to sickness, or even worse, prone to injury. This is because of Overtraining. The 2014-2015 and the 2016-2017 season were both wrought with injuries. It's not coincidence that we had multiple new guys in the rotation who probably never were given serious conditioning nor did they have the amount of physical workload during their days playing overseas/in the d-league/or in the bench of another team. It's an overload of physical stresses that lead to impaired performance, impaired immune system, and impaired structural integrity of the body. Imo, this is why Dragic was slumping hard early after he visited in Slovenia and didn't get to play with his country's team. This is also why Wade got hurt in 2014-2015 after losing weight DURING the season. It's hard enough to maintain strength and speed gains while losing weight, do it trying to stay competitive makes it doubly hard. This is also why Luke Babbitt has frequent back spasms. Why Gerald Green started so hot but fizzled into nothing for us. His body legit could not handle the workload. Why we get so many guys falling sick for no reason to illness when athletes usually have an increased immune system boost because of their physical fitness. The Heat guys do become overtrained, specially if they are new to the system.

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Note that this is not the only criticism of the Heat's conditioning program. The HoopsHype article I linked to earlier talked about how there are free agents who specifically do not want to go to Miami because of the demands.

The grueling conditioning program of the Heat seems a little bit antithetical to the approach of Aaron Nelson and his staff with regards to injury prevention. It would be interesting to see if there was any friction between a coach coming from the Heat organization wanting to install their conditioning culture, which may have a history of initially overtraining/injuring guys, and our training staff, which is on the forefront of injury prevention and very conservative in ramping up conditioning.

Conditioning is hugely important in any sport, and gives an edge late in games, and late in the season when others are tired. Obviously with Zion, conditioning will be one of the deciding factors in whether or not he lives up to his potential. At the same time, remaining healthy will also be one of the deciding factors in whether or not he lives up to his potential. I think we were all a little frustrated with Zion's minutes restriction in the bubble, but then I look at guys like Jonathan Isaac (who will miss all of next season as well), Ben Simmons, and Jaren Jackson Jr. and I completely agree with why our training staff took the approach that they did in trying to avoid a longer-term soft tissue injury.

Ultimately I am sure there is a way that you can have both rigorous conditioning and smart injury prevention. Maybe with Zion you focus more on diet than vomit-inducing workouts. But it's worth noting that this forum may be more on board with the Heat's grueling conditioning program than David Griffin, who worked in Phoenix for 17 years and is aligned with Aaron Nelson's more conservative philosophy.