Miami season of drama, heartache is a test of Heat Culture & Spoelstra’s best coaching job | Opinion

Whatever “Heat Culture” means is conveyed unmistakably in Miami’s flatly audacious description of itself: “The Hardest Working, Best Conditioned, Most Professional, Unselfish, Toughest, Meanest, Nastiest Team in the NBA.” The club adds the capital letters as if the braggadocio needed further emphasis.

Whatever Heat Culture is worth -- whatever power it has to lift and to steel resolve -- is being tested like never before as the season rolls to its midpoint with this week’s 73rd NBA All-Star Game in Indianapolis.

Few teams could use the respite, the exhale, like the Heat.

The season has been one of injury-caused dishevelment and off-court drama that has seen Miami clawing and scrambling to be above water at 29-25 with one game left before the break. The Heat is on the far edge of playoff pace and trying to avoid the play-in tournament -- just like last season, when eighth-seeded Miami stunningly reached the NBA Finals before falling to Denver.

Now, though, the Boston Celtics look dominant in the Eastern Conference and Miami by any reckoning has fallen to mid-pack. Yet coach Erik Spoelstra summons last year’s postseason run in daring anyone to dismiss this year’s Heat as nobody’s contender.

Club president and godfather Pat Riley dreamed up that Heat Culture mantra as a self-fulfilling prophecy to imbue confidence and fight, and it has become Scripture in Miami, with Spoelstra the evangelist out front.

So in the midst of a season of trials and turmoil he says: “Buckle up. We’re not hiding from anybody. We’re looking forward to the second half of the season.”

Spoelstra was given an extraordinary eight-year, $120 million contract extension earlier this season to underline Riley’s faith, richest deal ever for an NBA coach. He won NBA titles in 2012 and ‘13 with the LeBron James/Dwyane Wade/Chris Bosh Big 3 -- but this, even at barely above .500, may be his best coaching job.

The season almost felt cursed before it began with Miami enduring the biggest loss of the offseason when Portland traded star Damian Lillard to East rival Milwaukee -- even though Lillard publicly lobbied and begged for a trade to the Heat.

Lillard just made the all-star team, and Miami has missed the scoring punch he would have brought, with the Heat’s 110.6 scoring average ranking 27th of 30 teams.

Some of that has been constant lineup flux that has left Spoelstra a juggler.

Heat players combined have missed 167 games due to injuries, fifth-most in the NBA. Current Big 3 Jimmy Butler, Bam Adebayo (the team’s lone all-star selection) and Tyler Herro seldom have all been on the court together. Spoelstra has been puppeteer of a constantly changing rotation.

The coach himself went through a divorce from his wife of seven years earlier in the season, sharing custody of their three young kids ages 5, 3 and 1. “Difficult yet amicable,” they called the decision. As Spoelstra dealt with that heartache privately-in-public, ex-wife Nikki has spoken on Instagram about being bullied online -- even mocked because the divorce was final just before his huge contact extension.

“Ignoring it [harassment] for years messed with my emotional health and people need to have a better understanding of how their words can affect other people,” she wrote. “Be nicer.”

There have been additional unusual challenges.

A major in-season trade, essentially Kyle Lowry for Terry Rozier, affected team chemistry and took time to fit. It still has not, really. (Now, fittingly for this season, Rozier is out indefinitely with a knee injury.)

Off-court drama has visited, too.

Butler continues away from the team mourning a death in his family. (When he returns, can he still summon Playoff Jimmy at age 34 to lead another postseason run?)

As Butler was away, prominent rotation player Haywood Highsmith last week was cited for “driving in a careless or negligent manner” in an accident that caused the person he hit to suffer what was called a “partially amputated leg.” Highsmith stayed at the scene to lend support until help arrived. Imagine the weight that heaps on you as you resume the business of bouncing a basketball for a living?

The Heat has become a franchise in need of a direction moving forward as Butler ages and “What’s next?” becomes a valid question. Is the championship window closed? Has it really ever been open more than a crack post-LeBron and post-D.Wade despite a couple of Finals appearances?

The landscape has changed.

The Heat does not own South Florida like it did the previous decade.

The Dolphins got good (and exciting, and interesting) to reassert that this is a football town first. The Florida Panthers have become better than good and are major Stanley Cup contenders in hockey again. The epochal arrival of global superstar Lionel Messi has made MLS suddenly soccer matter in Miami. Heck, even the Marlins made the playoffs!

The Heat operated for years in a gilded space in Miami sports. This was the one team we could most count on to make us feel like a winner, a contender.

Now our NBA team fights to regain that stature and space.

It is a test of all that Heat Culture is or means to be.