Dru Smith #12 and Norman Powell #24 of the Miami Heat slap hands during the third quarter against the Detroit Pistons at Little Caesars Arena on January 01, 2026 in Detroit. Nic Antaya Getty Images
The Miami Heat’s new-look high-scoring and fast-paced offense has drawn a lot of attention this season. After all, the Heat has reached the 140-point mark in a league-leading seven games this season and is a perfect 7-0 in those contests.
But the Heat has struggled to win the games that its offense hasn’t been clicking in this season.
That’s what made Thursday night’s 118-112 win against the Pistons in Detroit especially impressive. Not only did it come on the road against a Pistons team that holds the Eastern Conference’s top record, but it also came when the Heat posted an offensive rating of 108.3 points scored per 100 possessions that would rank second worst in the NBA among teams this season.
“The games aren’t always going to go to our identity, and that’s OK,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said. “More often than not, it will. I mean, this is going to continue to get better. But if it’s in the mud or if it’s not going fluidly, you still have to find a way to overcome and get the win.”
That’s what the Heat (19-15) did to get its fourth win in a row Thursday, earning only its fifth victory of the season when posting an offensive rating of lower than 108.5 points scored per 100 possessions. Miami is now 5-8 in those games this season.
The Heat defeated the Pistons despite shooting only 43.4% from the field and committing 20 turnovers. Miami is now just 2-5 this season when shooting worse than 44% from the field and 2-5 this season when committing 18 or more turnovers.
“It means a lot,” Heat sixth man Jaime Jaquez Jr. said when asked about the Heat winning in Detroit despite a subpar offensive performance. “I think that’s the sign of a great team is winning in a lot of different ways. That’s something that we’ve been trying to do. You can’t just win all the time scoring 140. That’s unrealistic. So you’ve got to find ways to win and that’s what winners do. For us as a collective, that’s something that we’ve really been building toward.”
Lately, the Heat has won games behind its disruptiveness on defense.
After turning 21 Pistons turnovers into 24 points in Thursday’s victory, the Heat has scored more than 20 points off its opponents’ turnovers in three of the four games during this winning streak.
The Heat entered Friday with the NBA’s ninth-highest opponent turnover rate (percentage of opponent possessions that end in a turnover) this season at 15.3%. But that number has spiked to 18.2% during its four-game winning streak, as the Heat is now 11-4 this season when its opponent finishes with a turnover rate of over 16%.
“We become an average defense if we don’t play reckless, and with the physicality and everybody connected together,” Spoelstra said, with the Heat set to begin a back-to-back set at Kaseya Center on Saturday against the Minnesota Timberwolves (5 p.m., FanDuel Sports Network Sun, WPLG Local 10 and NBA TV).
The Heat owns one of the NBA’s top defenses, as it entered Friday with the NBA’s fourth-ranked defensive rating (allowing 111.9 points per 100 possessions) this season. Miami limited Detroit to its fourth-worst single-game offensive rating of the season on Thursday.
“It means that we’re very versatile,” Heat guard Norman Powell said of the team finding different ways to win games. “Not every night, I’ve said it before, we’re going to score 140. Everybody wants to see that. Great. But we have some good teams here that play defense and are physical. They’re going to take us out of our first and second and third options, so we’ve got to be able to adjust and work the ball around and get the looks that we want.
“I thought we did a great job throughout the course of the game doing that, not letting their physicality take us out of what we wanted to do and playing together, trusting one another for the full 48 [minutes].”
Head coach Erik Spoelstra of the Miami Heat reacts against the Detroit Pistons during the first quarter at Little Caesars Arena on January 01, 2026 in Detroit. Nic Antaya Getty Images
Another key to the Heat’s recent success? Better third quarters.
Prior to this four-game winning streak, the Heat reached Christmas with the NBA’s 22nd-ranked net rating in third quarters (being outscored by opponents by 3.5 points per 100 possessions) for the season.
But during this four-game winning streak, the Heat has actually outscored opponents by 11.8 points per 100 possessions in third quarters.
“We’ve had enough games where we were a dud out of it,” Spoelstra said when asked about the Heat’s improved third quarters. “I credit the locker room. In our meeting on Christmas Eve, basically everybody was talking about that, that we need to have more consistency coming out of the locker room. We’ve had a lot of halftime leads or played great first half basketball. Even in those losses, we had so many of those games where we played really well and then the third quarter would just do us in. So our guys have taken that to heart to try to be more consistent throughout the course of the game.”
Heat captain Bam Adebayo credited Spoelstra for pushing the team to be better after halftime.
“We feel like we have a drop-off to start the third [quarter],” Adebayo said. “Our coach is a maniac, and he’s going to emphasize it and pick at it until we get it right. So we’ve been getting it right lately. Keep this going so he can stay off our backs.”
If the Heat keeps playing like it has lately, Spoelstra won’t be on their backs as much. After dropping eight of nine games to fall back to .500 following a 14-7 start to the season, the Heat is again four games above the .500 and finding different ways to win.
“It’s just a good start to 2026. We’ll take it,” Spoelstra said following Thursday’s road victory over the Pistons. “That’s a very good team. Obviously, they’re coming off a West Coast trip. But this is the NBA, so we will definitely take it.”