MIAMI — There was a time when separating three players from the rest was the norm for the Miami Heat.
By that time, the Big Three of LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh had already emerged, and the latter two had already entered the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, becoming the first of these three to eventually sweep Spring. Field people.
But this season, even at its youngest level, there are three things the Heat are thinking and saying.
It started before the season when Heat president Pat Riley essentially challenged the core of Jimmy Butler, Bam Adebayo and Tyler Herro, especially when Damian Lira D or Jrue Holiday obviously wasn’t going to walk through that door.
“How I look at our team, how we look at our team, the player that stirs the whole drink is Jimmy,” Riley told the Sun-Sentinel. “But Bam and Tyler are our cornerstones. Thank God we have the future we have. I think Tyler and Bam, and Jimmy, they all have to have the best years of their careers for us to continue pursuing this.”
It’s easier for management to provide that without having to face the challenge of 14 other guys in the locker room every day and having to convince them that they matter, too.
But it didn’t stop at that moment. Instead, even with playoff-caliber contributors like Kyle Lowry and Duncan Robinson, and even with first-round pick Jaime Jax, coach Erik Spoelstra’s theme remains about Three cornerstones.
So while the new season is off to a rocky start, and while Monday night’s game against James and the Los Angeles Lakers at Cassia Center harkens back to the Big Three era that preceded it, there’s no escaping the reality that the 2023-24 Heat will be Bart. The product of Le, Adebayo and Herro’s productivity.
“We need more Jimmys, Bams, Tylers, all playing to their strengths and helping each other to make other people play at a higher level,” Spoelstra said.
“Not only do they make each other better, they make their teammates better, and that’s what we need them to do.”
After losing Max Strouse to the Cleveland Cavaliers and Gabe Vincent to the Lakers in the offseason, the team’s depth is not as strong as it was when they entered the NBA Finals last season.
That makes triple duty arguably more necessary than the previous four seasons Butler, Adebayo and Herro played together.
At least until now.
“Yeah, we get paid top dollar and with that comes responsibility,” Herro said, off his best start to the season. “We have a responsibility as a trio to get on the same page and lead these guys and our teammates so they can follow us and we can do that as a collective.
“It’s not going to be me, Bam, Jimmy and Kyle. It’s got to be together and that’s what we’ve done in the past, stay connected.”
All of this is in the appreciation of something the Heat don’t have.
“We’re not the most talented group,” Herro said, “but I think we can connect with each other and everything else in between, I think that’s going to make a difference.”
The respect for the entire roster remains, something Adebayo was asked to maintain in his first stint as team captain, hopefully with the likes of Josh Richardson, Haywood Highsmith, Thomas Bryant Such a person can recover from the offseason knee. In the team’s Big Three era, Caleb Martin can provide Mike Miller, Ray Allen and Shane Battier as James, Wade and support provided by Bosh.
For now, Adebayo believes it should be up to himself, Butler and Herro to set the tone and take the lead.
“I mean we’re aware of it,” he said. “We’ve talked about it. Obviously, we have internal conversations about what we want the season to look like and how we want it to go.
“Me, Jimmy and Tyler need to take care of things.”