Grit. Relentless energy. Feistiness. Toughness. A defensive zeal.
Unless you’re a three-point shooting assassin, all are non-negotiable requirements for Heat role players.
But to stay in coach Erik Spoelstra’s rotation, role players must offer not only those Heat Culture intangibles but ideally something more, too.
Pelle Larsson, Simone Fontecchio and two-way player Myron Gardner have done that in recent games, and they’re being rewarded with minutes.
Larsson and Fentecchio had their fingerprints all over the Heat’s 130-117 win in Sacramento on Tuesday, pushing the Miami to 23-21 (and 1-1 on this Western road trip) as Miami heads to Portland to play the Trail Blazers on Thursday at Moda Center (10 p.m., FanDuel Sports Sun).
Besides playing with his usual defensive edginess, Larsson chipped in 16 points (7-for-9 shooting), nine assists, six rebounds and a steal and twice managed to infuriate normally mild-manner veteran DeMar Rozan, who body checked him to the ground on one sequence and clotheslined him on another.
That perplexed Larsson. “I didn’t say nothing, I didn’t start nothing,” Larsson said. “All I said was what he said to me, back to him.”
Miami is now 14-9 with Larsson starting, and different aspects of his game continue to blossom. The nine assists were a career high.
“He’s doing a lot more playmaking now, that secondary playmaker [role],” Spoelstra said. “He’s got a great feel to get into the paint and make the appropriate reads. He’s our best lob passer. If you don’t bring an extra defender, he’s a very good finisher as well. He’s just gaining confidence.”
Larsson, a 2024 second-round draft pick, says it helps that “a few things in our offense are similar to what we were doing at Arizona. Some are the exact same where I can feel comfortable. But it’s more having another year under our belt with these coaches, learning from them. They’re hard on us, but they believe in us.”
Norman Powell said Larsson — who’s holding the player he guards to 44.4% shooting — exemplifies Heat culture, in many ways: “We’re going to be gritty and tough. If guys are going to be chippy we’re not going to back down. That’s the style of play we have to play going forward. That’s what this Heat organization has been. If we’re not making shots, we’re going to play that tough, physical game. Pelle brings that energy and identity. Everybody sees that, and we’re going to rally behind that.”
Fontecchio, for his part, has regained a foothold in the rotation after a dismal shooting stretch that contributed to a diminishment in minutes. He had 40 points, 20 rebounds, five assists, two steals and a block in 83 minutes over the Heat’s past three games. His five threes against Sacramento (on nine shots) boosted his season three-point percentage to 36.9.
“All season he has done the intangible stuff really well,” Spoelstra said. “That’s been a nice surprise. He’s been very good in our team defense, [offers] good rebonding at his position, good at containing off the dribble. Moving without the ball, he helps our offense. He can impact the game whether he’s making threes or not. When he’s ignitable, he can break quarters open.”
Powell said of Fontecchio: “All he cares about is winning.”
Gardner, on a two-way contract, has played at least 12 minutes in three of the past five games. The 6-5 small forward has hit 18 of 37 shots (48.6 percent) in his 101 minutes, this season including 8 of 21 (38.1 percent) on threes, while holding the player he’s guarding to 41.7 percent shooting (15 of 36).
“He’s providing value right now,” Spoelstra said. “He was given some opportunities because of injuries. Now he makes you raise your eyebrows and watch the film a little more closely and that’s what you want. Make me watch you and make me play you, and you do it with your actions. I really like what he’s done. His energy is contagious. The guys like playing with him. You feel him and see him and sense him when he’s in the game.”
Guard Davion Mitchell concurred: “There are going to be some nights when we’re dead, especially back to back, your legs are tired. When you get the energy from a guy like Myron, you need that.”
Dru Smith’s headiness, defensive bent and high effort kept him in the rotation for a while, but he was a healthy scratch on Monday amid an ongoing shooting slump.
Whoever Spoelstra uses as the role-players-du-jour, he makes clear that an ability to impact winning.
“Most young players… coming into the league… they have no idea what the score is,” Spoelstra said. “They’re just thinking about how many shots they have and how many points they can score. It’s really kind of a lost language of learning how to impact winning. We have a few of the guys on our team that really embrace that, and we feel grateful that they have that kind of emotional maturity to be able to help in that regard.”
Of the role player role, Spoelstra said: “Some players view that as an indictment on their ability. It’s not. Shane Battier had a whole career on just embracing that and making good teams great because of all the winning intangibles that he brought to the table. And some fans weren’t able to see it. But the fans and the people that he was around in an organization, they could feel it and see it right away.
“And so it has evolved, but I think it’s more of a mentality rather than like a skill set. It’s finding the right kind of player that will embrace that and take pride in that role. I used to always say about P.J. Tucker, and this was obviously a few years ago, but I said that there should be a case study in guys like him and Udonis Haslem when they do the Rookie Symposium and do the education that they do on all these different areas, which are great.
“But also an education of how you can impact winning in ways that are not necessarily celebrated because everybody wants to be that 30-point scorer, and yet there’s only a few of them. There’s a lot more players that have to fit into that category of being a role player but don’t want to do it. They’re hard to find. We’ve been fortunate enough that we’ve had some great ones over the years. And on our current team right now, we have some very good ones.”