Erik Spoelstra - Profile: Is The Coach Behind The Heat Latino?

Coaches like the Miami Heat's Erik Spoelstra are a rare breed.

Unlike many leading the charge in the NBA, who are former NBA all-stars and college recruits gone pro, Spoelstra never played in the league or captured glory in the NCAA tournament. Rather, his only experience comes coaching a youth basketball team in Westphalia, Germany.

At the age of 25, his father - an NBA executive himself - arranged an internship for young Spoelstra with the Miami Heat, where Erik served as video coordinator, helping splice together film. He knew nothing about the practice, but anything to get closer to the action was good for him. From there, he climbed the ladder until being named heir apparent to Pat Riley's throne as head coach of the team in 2011.

At 42 years of age, Spoelstra is also young; real young. Of the thirty coaches in the NBA, only the Hornets' Monty Williams and the Pacers' Frank Vogel are younger. Heat's player Juwan Howard, 40, is practically the same age. And in an NBA where dinosaurs like Rick Adelman, 66, continue to patrol the floors, his youth sets him apart. Gregg Poppovich, coach of the Western Conference Champion San Antonio Spurs, got his first college head-coaching job at Pomona-Pitzer in 1979; Spolstra was eight years old at the time.

That relative youth - both compared to the players and other coaches - has allowed Spoelstra to lead more naturally, and his coaching style has been described as more fraternal than paternal.

Not that "fraternal" means weak; with a defensive efficiency rating of 100.5, the Heat were the 7^th most efficient group this year. Offensively, they were first.

With all his success (including the Larry O'Brien trophy last year) Spoelstra's race as a milestone is lost as a footnote. A Filipino, he's the first Asian-American coach in NBA history. Though not technically regarded as a Latino nation, the Philippines were a Spanish colony for 300 years, longer than the entire lifespan of the United States of America, leaving it the only semi-Hispanicized enclave in all of Asia.