MIAMI — There have been moments over this 18-year run of coaching the Miami Heat that have forced Erik Spoelstra to reassess anything and everything.
Most notable was the 2011 offseason, after the crushing NBA Finals loss to the Dallas Mavericks in the first year of the Heat’s Big Three with LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh.
Little looked the same in the Heat approach going forward. Two championships immediately followed.
Then fast forward to last season’s final two games.
April 26 at Kaseya Center: Cleveland Cavaliers 124, Miami Heat 87.
April 28 at Kaseya Center: Cleveland Cavaliers 138, Miami Heat 83.
Those final two games of the first-round sweep made it the most lopsided playoff series in NBA history.
“Embarrassing,” Spoelstra said of the wake of the numbing humiliation.
“After that series, it was humbling. We had plenty of time to get away, decompress.”
So now, like then in 2011, something completely different.
This time, offense played at pace, the fastest pace in the league, as again displayed in Saturday night’s 136-131 victory over the Portland Trail Blazers, in the second game of this four-game homestand.
Enter the Cavaliers, for games Monday and Wednesday nights at Kaseya Center, the first matchups since the carnage.
It was a playoff loss so stinging that it still resonates, with no better example than an offense that resembles nothing like what the Heat offered in that playoff series against the Cavaliers.
“We were done at the end of April, and it was a very painful, embarrassing first-round loss,” Spoelstra said. “We had done a lot emotionally to earn that ticket to get into the playoffs, and we felt really proud about that, back-to-back (play-in) games on the road to earn that ticket. And it was just — it was embarrassing. And you had to credit Cleveland with that.”
So Spoelstra entered the think tank, picking the brain of Heat President Pat Riley, among others.
Something had to change.
“That sparked a lot of thought that we needed to do some things better, and differently,” Spoelstra said.
Beyond the stylistic changes, the Heat also retooled the roster, most notably with Norman Powell and Simone Fontecchio added, and with Duncan Robinson, Haywood Highsmith, Kyle Anderson and Kevin Love gone from that playoff roster.
Still, enough remains that there can’t help but be a carryover of the institutional knowledge of abject failure.
“To me, personally, it does matter what happened, and you can’t put it aside,” said forward Nikola Jovic, who is coming off Saturday night’s career-high 29 points against the Trail Blazers. “We looked terrible. You never want to look like that. So it does really matter to me.”
What happened then won’t necessarily happen now, with the Cavaliers also having retooled. Gone from the Cavaliers roster that pulverized that Heat are Ty Jerome and Isaac Okoro, with Max Strus currently sidelined by injury.
So perhaps time for the Heat to instead move on, instead of looking back?
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“I don’t think there’s a right or wrong answer here,” Jovic said. “I also think it’s smart if you try to forget about it and not think about it. But for me, it kind of motivates me.”
Which pretty much is the consensus, with the series unforgettable, even if for all the wrong reasons.
“This is obviously a new year, new team,” said guard Jaime Jaquez Jr., who is coming off Saturday night’s 14-point, 12-rebound, seven-assist effort against Portland. “But we have a lot of guys that are back from that team last year. We don’t forget. I don’t think we can take what happened lightly.”
So if not retribution, at least competition.
“I think everybody here is more than aware of what we want to do,” Jaquez said.
