Depending on the culture within the locker room of a professional sports franchise, it could be easy to be distracted by the active night life in major cities on the road.
That will not be the case for the Miami Heat in the 1st round of the NBA Playoffs, as the Heat players have set up a "no-go-out policy" for their trip to Atlanta. The Heat kick off their series against the Hawks today.
"I think it's the best leadership and the strongest leadership that these guys have shown here in a Heat uniform," Miami coach Erik Spoelstra said. "That's the most powerful. We've talked about it all the time as a staff. Sometimes that can fall on, you know, not deaf ears, but when your veteran guys and your captains say that, I think that's a beautiful thing."
Credit Heat captains Dwyane Wade and Udonis Haslem - the only holdovers in the rotation from the 2006 NBA Champions - for both setting a good example, as well as learning from established veterans when they were coming up.
"The veteran guys before us, when we came in to the league like Brian Grant, Eddie Jones, that's what they believed in," said Wade, referring to two former Heat captains. "So this is the core of what we know. This is focus time. This isn't play time. Play time is the summer. You can do what you want in the regular season, too. Not now. We're the leaders, so we're just going from what we know."
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