Heat tries to figure out how to measure up vs. taller Bucks. What Heat said Friday about it

Erik Spoelstra has tried a little bit of everything this season while rolling out 27 different starting lineups.

Among others, the Heat coach has started miniature starting power forwards, more traditional starting power forwards, groups with three undrafted players, a rookie still trying to graduate from high school and a 42-year-old Heat legend.

He has deployed lineups with Max Strus starting at three different positions (thankfully, not at once) and ex-Heater Dru Smith opening a game at point guard.

Not a single one of the 27 starting groups has had any kind of sustained success during a wildly inconsistent season. The starting quintet that had the highest winning percentage (Jimmy Butler, Strus, Bam Adebayo, Gabe Vincent and Tyler Herro) went 5-1, but is an impossibility now because of Herro’s hand injury that will sideline him at least five weeks.

And now — as this Heat-Bucks first-round series shifts to Miami for Game 3 on Saturday night — Spoelstra, once again, must decide the starting group best suited to topple the East’s No. 1 seed in a best-of-7 series that’s tied at one game apiece.

And Spoelstra must do it without knowing whether the Bucks will have All-NBA forward Giannis Antetokounmpo at full strength, or at all. The Bucks listed Antetokounmpo as questionable for Game 3 because of his lower back contusion.

A starting group with 6-5 Strus starting at power forward, paired with Butler, had won six of eight times this season, including the opener of this series, before Miami was pummeled 138-122 in Game 2.

But Strus was at a loss trying to defend 7-1 Brook Lopez, who scored 14 of his 25 points in the first quarter. That inability to match up with Lopez’s size at least partly triggered problems on the perimeter, on a night the Bucks tied an NBA playoff record with 25 made threes and trounced the Heat despite playing without Antetokounmpo.

The Bucks had 26 paint points on 11-of-15 shooting in just the first quarter of Game 1.

So does Spoelstra need to inject more size, alongside 6-9 Adebayo, in his starting lineup?

“We’ll see,” a noncommittal Spoelstra said Friday. “We’ll see if he plays.”

But Spoelstra also acknowledged that “I’m sure they [the Bucks] feel like they want to take advantage of [Strus’] size a little bit more, particularly if GA doesn’t play... We’ll have to see if our coverage as is can be a lot better or if we can make an adjustment.”

Asked if he has re-evaluated his starting lineup (which also included opening with Duncan Robinson in Herro’s place in Game 2), Spoelstra said: “Yeah, you have to be responsible about it. You want to figure out what makes the most sense for our team to set up the rest of the rotation. And then you have the other part of it, preparing against two teams — if GA plays or if he doesn’t play.”

Lopez has shot 5 of 7 when defended by Strus in this series, and 6-11 power forward Bobby Portis has shot 3 of 5 against Strus.

What can Strus do to compensate for an eight-inch size deficit against Lopez? “Be a little more physical,” Strus said Friday. “He’s huge... Last game, that was a bad job of us starting out soft. Physicality has to be a big part of [Game 3] and we’ll come out with that for sure.”

Adebayo said that when Strus is defending Lopez, “We need to do a better job of helping Max and make sure he has an extra body around him.”

Whether Antetokounmpo or Portis starts in Game 3, Miami will be defending a 6-11 power forward and a 7-1 center (Lopez) without the height to match.

But if Spoelstra moves away from Strus starting at power forward, options are limited.

Spoelstra could reinsert 6-8 Kevin Love, but the Heat was 7-10 with Love starting this season, and Love generally has been more productive as a reserve since joining Miami.

And when Adebayo and Love played together, the Heat was outscored by 24 points in the regular season and by four points in 17 minutes so far in this series.

During the season, Adebayo’s plus/minus with Love was Adebayo’s third worst, behind only the Adebayo/Robinson pairing (minus-25) and when Adebayo played with Haywood Highsmith (minus 62).

Asked Friday if he and Spoelstra have talked about Love rejoining the first unit, Love said: “We’ll see. I know a lot will be dependent on if Giannis is playing. In terms of matchups, we’re probably going to throw a few different looks at them. We need the size, we need the rebounding, but we still need to be able to pack the paint and be able to get up to the three-point shooters.”

Regardless of who starts, “we have to be better on our coverages,” Love said. “If we’re switching, all being on the same page with eye to eye communication. That was definitely our focus” during Friday’s practice.

Caleb Martin, 6-5, is a better defender than Strus but wouldn’t solve the size issue against Milwaukee’s sequoia sized front line.

And playing 6-11 Cody Zeller with Adebayo seemingly isn’t an option because Spoelstra traditionally likes playing Adebayo with a power forward or center with three-point range.

Adebayo (who is 8 for 62 on three-pointers in his career) and Zeller (32 for 147, 21.8 percent) didn’t play a single minute together this season. They haven’t practiced on the same unit either, Zeller said.

“The way the league has gone, you need more shooting on the court, and neither one of us shoots threes,” Zeller said.

Spoelstra began training camp eager to watch 6-11 Omer Yurtseven teamed with Adebayo, a pairing with potential after Yurtseven polished his three-point shot during the summer. But Yurtseven’s ankle surgery torpedoed that experiment, and Yurtseven is now buried near the end of the Heat bench.

But sticking with the status quo could leave the Heat coming up short. When Adebayo and Strus have been on the floor together in this series, the Heat has been outscored by 13 points in 52 minutes despite shooting 56 percent from the field and 15 for 32 on threes.

So while there are options for Spoelstra to counter the Bucks’ size advantage, there might not be any particularly appealing ones.

According to NBA.com, Adebayo had guarded Lopez for 7:39 minutes in this series, Portis for 5:02, Antetokounmpo for 2:56 of his 11 total minutes, and eight other players for varying amounts. Lopez has shot three for five against Adebayo, Portis two for two and Antetokounmpo two for four.

“You make adjustments and hopefully they work,” Strus said.