Winderman’s view: Spoelstra stirs up a new Heat cocktail, turns it into a winning mix

Observations and other notes of interest from Monday night’s 106-89 victory over the Philadelphia 76ers:

– Interesting.

– Perhaps just the right mix of shooting and defense.

– So Duncan Robinson into the starting lineup alongside Tyler Herro.

– And then Jimmy Butler, Haywood Highsmith and Bam Adebayo for the defense.

– Granted, Erik Spoelstra had the freedom for the move with Terry Rozier sidelined with a foot issue.

– But it also meant removing Kevin Love from the first five.

– Granted, the starting lineup is only part of the process.

– And this one has an undersized team even more undersized.

– But the Heat, as configured, are a team designed to win in the margins.

– With defense.

– And shooting.

– So two-fifths shooting and three-fifths defense.

– Spoelstra just might have hit on the right cocktail.

– Eventually needing a buy-in from Rozier when Rozier is able to return.

– From the outset, the goal was lineup stability.

– Therefore the long look at Nikola Jovic over the season’s first eight games.

– With mixed results.

– Then Rozier’s balky right foot opened the door for something different.

– And potentially better.

– Enduring?

– Wait and see.

– With the Heat now idle until Sunday’s visit by the Mavericks.

– Going small Monday night was an option with the 76ers opening with former Heat forward Caleb Martin at power forward.

– That shifted Love to the reserve rotation.

– Love had started each of his previous four appearances.

– Love and Pelle Larsson played as the Heat’s first two reserves.

– Larsson, who had fallen out of the rotation, got the call with Jaime Jaquez Jr. sidelined by the ankle sprain sustained Sunday in Indiana.

– Josh Richardson followed.

– With Jovic making it nine deep.

– As the deficit grew, Spoelstra even turned to Alec Burks for the first time in six games, and to Dru Smith for the first time in eight games.

– Burks and Smith then got early calls in the second half, ahead of Richardson and Larsson.

– Butler’s third point moved him past Tim Hardaway (6,335) for 10 th place on the Heat’s all-time scoring list. His 16th point pushed him past Goran Dragi? for ninth place.

– The double-scoring effort tied Butler with Grant Long for 12th on the Heat’s such all-time list.

– Butler’s third free throw was the 5,500th of his career.

– Herro extended his streak of games with at least one 3-pointer to 52, one game off the longest such streak of his career.

– Herro also now has converted multiple 3-pointers in every game this season.

– Herro extended his streak of scoring in double figures to 43 dating to last season. His previous longest such streak had been 38 games in 2021-22.

– Spoelstra addressed Rozier’s foot soreness pregame.

– “It flared up last night,” Spoelstra said of the aftermath of Sunday’s game in Indiana. “He’s been dealing with it for some time. But after the game and on the flight, it didn’t really clear up this morning.”

– The Heat being off for five days now should help, Spoelstra said.

– “This should be a good week for him, to be able to get treatment, to get that right and keep moving forward,” Spoelstra said. “Hopefully it’s not a long-term thing.”

– Spoelstra spoke pregame of attempting to regain footing one game at a time.

– “You can’t stack up a bunch of wins tonight. You can stack up one win,” he said pregame. “And when you’re dealing with a small margin for error throughout this conference, it’s about sustaining whatever your game is, who can sustain longer and more consistently.”

– He added, “And you watch games, you throw ’em on, there’s just these swings back and forth. You get the sense as long as the teams are playing for playoff spots, that any team can win on any given night in either conference. It’s great for the league, great for the fans. You love it for the competition part of it. And what you want is it brings out the best in your team.”

– Asked pregame about the state of his team, Spoelstra said, “There’s urgency there, for sure. And if you look at it in both conferences, there’s urgency throughout the conferences. And I think there’s parity. It brings out great competition. It brings out all these different emotions. You win a game, you feel like everything is great. Then you lose a game, you feel like the world is coming down.”

– He added, “That’s what competition does, particularly when you’re jostling so competitively in the standings, where there’s a lot of teams bunched up. A couple of wins can change the feeling of things. But the urgency is definitely there. So the habits that we’re building, we feel like are trending in a solid direction. And, yes, we would like to turn these habits into wins.”

– Spoelstra also spoke pregame of the return of Martin with the 76ers.

– “I love Caleb and I’ll always root for him,” Spoelstra said of the forward who left the Heat in free agency last summer. “I really respect him and I love him for who he is, how he represents himself, who he is as a competitor and how he is off the court. All those kind of qualities, he really draws you in.”

– Spoelstra added, “That’s a relationship that will transcend these teams; it will transcend the careers. All those things.”

– As for Monday’s announcement by the Lakers that they will honor Heat President Pat Riley with a statue, Spoelstra said, “This is just incredible.”

– “Rightly so,” Spoelstra said. “Those Showtime Lakers are iconic. The image of a professional basketball coach, he just totally changed it in the ’80s. And then made it something that people thought was like, ‘Hey that would be really cool,’ to be able to do something like that.”

– The game concluded the first of the Heat’s 15 back-to-back sets this season.

– Flo Rida was among those in the crowd, as was tennis star Aryna Sabalenka.