USA Basketball Tabs Erik Spoelstra As Next World Cup, Olympic Men's Coach

The Heat coach will reportedly lead the United States on home soil.

Erik Spoelstra has reportedly received the coaching job of a lifetime. / David Richard-Imagn Images

Heat coach Erik Spoelstra may have led Miami during its Big Three years—but he's never received an assignment quite like this reported one.

Spoelstra will lead the United States men's basketball team during the next Olympic cycle, according to a Thursday morning report from ESPN's Shams Charania. He will coach the squad at the 2027 World Cup in Qatar, and then he will lead it at the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.

He replaces Warriors coach Steve Kerr, who led the team to a fourth-place World Cup finish in 2023 and an Olympic gold medal in Paris in 2024.

Coaching the Americans in the Olympics is considered an ultra-prestigious honor; previous coaches to lead the squad include Dean Smith, Bob Knight, Chuck Daly, Mike Krzyzewski and Gregg Popovich.

Spoelstra, a 54-year-old native of Evanston, Ill., who served as the lead assistant to Kerr in '24, is 787-572 lifetime with two NBA and six Eastern Conference titles to his name.

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