Lakers coach Mike D’Antoni praised Heat coach Erik Spoelstra for his innovative approach to basketball on Wednesday.

“Erik is an unbelievable coach,” D’Antoni said. “He has played to everyone’s strengths and he’s not afraid to go against conventional wisdom sometimes. Even when they started off bad he kept pushing the envelope a little bit, kept spreading the floor a little bit more.

“When people said you can’t win going small, he did. He won. When people said you can’t win two times going small, he did. He won. People keep saying he can’t do this and he can’t do that and he keeps doing it and he keeps pushing them.”

D’Antoni, of course, mastered a form of small ball with coaching Steve Nash and the Phoenix Suns. There are plenty of parallels between D’Antoni’s Phoenix teams and Spoelstra’s current vision of the Heat.

“It’s not the schemes,” D’Antoni said. “It’s hard to scout because you don’t know what they’re doing. I don’t even know if they know what they’re doing, but that’s how you play basketball.

“They know how to play basketball, and you watch them and everything they do is a flow. It’s beautiful to watch and it’s fun.”

How times have changed. Not too long ago, a former coach of the Lakers lobbed heavy criticism at the Heat. Phil Jackson on the Heat from March 2011:

“Their basketball is very much in standing with Xbox games, or whatever those games are when you play one-on-one,” Jackson said. “Basketball is not a one-on-one game. It's a team game.”