{"id":13764,"date":"2012-08-03T02:08:20","date_gmt":"2012-08-03T02:08:20","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2012-08-03T02:08:20","modified_gmt":"2012-08-03T02:08:20","slug":"Miami-Heat-s-Spoelstra-is-SE-Asian-Ambassador-for-B-ball","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/?p=13764","title":{"rendered":"Miami Heat\u2019s Spoelstra is SE Asian Ambassador for B-ball"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>NBA officials say that Southeast Asia is the fastest growing market for the NBA, with a fan base growing with every season. In the Philippines, for example, the NBA has a social media following \u2013 \u2018likes\u2019 and mentions on Facebook and Twitter \u2013 that is second only to the US.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Southeast Asia\u2019s basketball talent received affirmation and advice from one of the NBA\u2019s most celebrated coaches \u2013 Erik Spoelstra<\/strong>, coach of the Miami Heat \u2013 this week as he toured the region, training young hopefuls and giving talks to fellow coaches.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Mr. Spoelstra \u2013 part Filipino, and the first Asian-American coach to win an NBA championship<\/strong> \u2013 said he was encouraged by the region\u2019s talent and believes that traditional perceptions of what it takes to be an NBA player are changing, allowing for more talent from Asia.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe game of basketball and the NBA is changing in terms of perceptions, the world is changing,\u201d said Mr. Spoelstra in an interview with the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday, adding <strong>that players like Jeremy Lin and others, some coming from outside the U.S., have changed \u201cperceptions of what an NBA player should look like.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The coach, also one of the youngest in the league, has traveled to the Philippines several times under the NBA FIT program, which aims to educate people on nutrition and fitness. He made his first visit to Singapore, as part of his Asian tour, and is now in the Philippines as part of the same tour.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAll of athletics has a great future [in Singapore],\u201d he added in comments to the media. <strong>\u201cI don\u2019t see why there won\u2019t continue to be players from Asia, from Europe, from South America, one of these days hopefully from the Philippines.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.wsj.com\/searealtime\/2012\/08\/02\/miami-heats-spoelstra-basketballs-se-asian-ambassador\/\">via blog.wsj.com<\/a><br \/>\n<!--break--><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>NBA officials say that Southeast Asia is the fastest growing market for the NBA, with a fan base growing with<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":72448,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13764","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"magazineBlocksPostFeaturedMedia":{"thumbnail":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u-113x150.jpg","medium":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","medium_large":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","large":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","1536x1536":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","2048x2048":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-highlighted-post":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-featured-post-medium":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-featured-post-small":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u-113x90.jpg","colormag-featured-image":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-default-news":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u-113x150.jpg","colormag-featured-image-large":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-elementor-block-extra-large-thumbnail":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-elementor-grid-large-thumbnail":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-elementor-grid-small-thumbnail":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-elementor-grid-medium-large-thumbnail":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg"},"magazineBlocksPostAuthor":{"name":"Admin","avatar":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/53e6cdc30765aade0129f85e5aeb50124b1d3f5bb9a70373be31e4eb328371e0?s=96&d=mm&r=g"},"magazineBlocksPostCommentsNumber":"1","magazineBlocksPostExcerpt":"NBA officials say that Southeast Asia is the fastest growing market for the NBA, with a fan base growing with","magazineBlocksPostCategories":[],"magazineBlocksPostViewCount":158,"magazineBlocksPostReadTime":2,"magazine_blocks_featured_image_url":{"full":["https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg",113,170,false],"medium":["https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg",113,170,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u-113x150.jpg",113,150,true]},"magazine_blocks_author":{"display_name":"Admin","author_link":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/?author=1"},"magazine_blocks_comment":1,"magazine_blocks_author_image":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/53e6cdc30765aade0129f85e5aeb50124b1d3f5bb9a70373be31e4eb328371e0?s=96&d=mm&r=g","magazine_blocks_category":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13764","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13764"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13764\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/72448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}