The ‘great sign’ on display after the Heat upset the Pistons

As Miami Heat star Bam Adebayo and head coach Erik Spoelstra led the team to an impressive 118-112 victory over the Eastern Conference’s No. 1 seed Detroit Pistons, the victory had a quality that has been missing this season. While it is The heat is back to basics in the last week with high wins, thursday night showed a huge improvement in winning in different ways.

Prior to its current four-game winning streak, the team had lost eight of its last nine contests, showing that Miami’s high-scoring, free-flowing offense was stalling, unable to correct course. With the Heat leading the league with seven games of at least 140 points, the win over the mighty Pistons showed that even with an offensive rating of 108.3 points per 100 possessions, which would be the second-worst in the league this season, the team still comes out victorious.

For a productive third year ahead Jaime Jaquez Jr., who scored 19 points in Detroit, winning in more ways than one is a “sign of a great team.”

“I think it’s a sign that a great team wins in a lot of different ways,” Jaquez said via the team’s YouTube page. “That’s something we’re trying to do. You can’t just win all the time at 140. … So you’ve got to find ways to win, and that’s what winners do. For us as a collective, that’s something we’ve really been building toward.”

Spoelstra has mentioned it countless times that he wants to see Miami win, even if it’s “in the mud.”

“The games aren’t always going to be about our identity, and that’s OK,” Spoelstra said. “More often than not, it will. I mean, it’s going to keep getting better. But if it’s in the mud or if it’s not flowing, you still have to find a way to overcome it.”

‘Versatie’ The Heat start 2026 with a bang as the team outscores the Pistons

During said slide, The Heat knew they could do better by emphasizing the quality that has been the basis of the team for countless years, its defense. Despite shooting 43 percent from the field and committing 20 turnovers, the team was active against the Pistons, forcing 21 turnovers while outscoring them by 24 points.

“That means we’re very diverse,” Norman Powell he said, scoring a career-high 36 points against the Pistons. “Not every night, I’ve said it before, we’re going to put up 140. Everybody wants to see that. Great. But we’ve got some good teams here that play defense and are physical. They’re going to take us out of our first, second and third option, so we’ve got to be able to adjust and work the ball and get the looks we want.”

Miami is looking to move on, but there’s no question that a team that beat the top seed in the East to start 2026 bodes well, potentially for the rest of the season.

“It’s just a good start to 2026. We’ll take it,” Spoelstra said. “It’s a very good team. Obviously, they’re coming off a trip to the West Coast. But this is the NBA, so we’ll definitely take it.”

The Heat are currently 19-15, and look to continue their winning streak this weekend with back-to-back games Saturday against the Minnesota Timberwolves and Sunday against the New Orleans Pelicans.