A number of teams in the Eastern Conference have exceeded expectations to begin the 2025-26 NBA season, and the Miami Heat are part of that group. Star guard Tyler Herro hasn’t played in a single game yet this season while star big man Bam Adebayo has sat out six games already, yet the Heat find themselves in ownership of the No. 4 seed in the East with an 11-6 record.
The Heat have been particularly hard to beat when they check certain boxes. Let’s look at five signs that any given team is about to pick up a loss to the 2025-26 iteration of the squad.
Sign No. 1: You’re playing Miami at Kaseya Center
The Heat have been nearly unbeatable at home this season and are in a tie for the second-best home record of any team in the Eastern Conference.
Of the eight games the Heat have played at Kaseya Center, they’ve won all but one of those contests. Miami’s lone loss in friendly territory thus far came against the Cleveland Cavaliers on Nov. 12, and the only teams in the East with equal or better home records are the No. 1 seed Detroit Pistons (who are 14-2 on the season and winners of their last 12 contests) and New York Knicks.
Fortunately for the Heat, they have a lengthy home stand on the horizon as well. Every one of their next four games will be at Kaseya Center, and they could potentially extend their current winning streak to well beyond four games.
Sign No. 2: Bam has it going from a scoring standpoint
While Adebayo was injured for a good while earlier in the month, he’s back in the lineup and has been scoring the ball at a solid rate since his return. He’s dropped 18-plus points in every game since his return, and when he scores at least 18 points, the Heat have been an incredibly tough out this season.
Adebayo has met or exceeded that point total eight times up to this point, and Miami is 7-1 in those contests. When he’s aggressive looking for his shot, the Heat are that much more lethal on the offensive end of the floor, and they are much tougher to beat as a result.
Sign No. 3: Jaime Jaquez Jr. is filling up the stat sheet
Jaquez, now a third-year player, has bounced back incredibly well from his sophomore slump and is playing easily his best basketball as a pro. Despite the fact that he hasn’t started a single game for the Heat just yet, he’s posting career-highs in points (16.7), rebounds (6.5) and assists (5.5) per game.
His ability to stuff the stat sheet across the board is unparalleled by any other Heat player, and there’s no doubt that it’s making a winning impact. Take a look at how it breaks down:
When Jaquez dishes out at least five assists, the Heat are 10-2
When he scores 14-plus points, Miami is 7-3
When he grabs 10 or more boards, the team is 3-0
It’s still incredibly early in the season, but with the way Jaquez is playing, he’s an early candidate for both the Most Improved Player and Sixth Man of the Year awards.
Sign No. 4: Norman Powell is available to play
Availability hasn’t been a major issue for Powell during his NBA career, but he also hasn’t been an iron man. Since the start of the 2018-19 season, he has logged 70-plus games in a campaign just once, and he was limited to 60 contests with the Los Angeles Clippers last season.
This season with the Heat, he has appeared in 14 of a possible 17 games, a solid start. Unfortunately, he was just ruled out of Monday’s upcoming matchup with a left groin strain, so Miami will have to get by without him for at least one game this week. He sat out three games earlier in the season with a right groin strain.
Across the 14 games he’s appeared in, the Heat have a very strong 10-4 record. That’s probably because he’s done a brilliant job serving as the team’s top scoring option in Herro’s absence. He’s averaging a team-high 25.4 points per game while shooting 50.0 percent from the field and 46.4 percent from 3-point range this season.
Sign No. 5: You’re tired after two or three quarters
Any Heat fan who hasn’t been living under a rock over the last month is aware that the team has played at a breakneck pace on offense this season to much success. Miami leads the NBA in pace, and that modus operandi has paid off in the form of it ranking tops in the league in points per game.
An October quote from Jaquez suggests that the Heat spent a lot of time during training camp and preseason preparing themselves for this fast style of play.
“I think a lot of guys will tell you we did a lot of running in training camp and even preseason leading up,” Jaquez said. “We were always doing drills to get us conditioned. It’s prepared us for this. We feel very confident in our conditioning going into the third quarter, fourth quarter. We know that we can lean on that and understand that we put the work in to get our bodies in the best shape possible.”
The Heat are conditioned to play at such a quick tempo, but that doesn’t mean other teams are. Miami is playing so quickly that opposing squads need to be in tip-top shape in order to keep up over the entirety of a 48-minute game, and any team that can’t is going to pay the price in the later stages of the game.