As LeBron James returns for a night, Heat in the midst of relying on a not-as-big three

When it comes to leading the way, the 2023-24 Miami Heat are all about Jimmy Butler, Bam Adebayo and Tyler Herro, mostly because they have to be.

MIAMI — There was a time when delineating three players apart from the rest was the norm for the Miami Heat.

That’s when there was the Big Three of LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh, the latter two already in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, the first of those three eventually to take Springfield by storm.

But this season, even in its youngest stages, also has the Heat thinking and talking in triplicate.

It started before the season, when Heat President Pat Riley essentially issued a challenge to the core of Jimmy Butler, Bam Adebayo and Tyler Herro, particularly when it became apparent that Damian Lillard or Jrue Holiday would not be walking through that door.

“How I look at our team, and how we look at our team, the player who stirs the whole drink is Jimmy,” Riley said to the Sun Sentinel. “But Bam and Tyler are our cornerstones. And thank God we have that future. And I think both Tyler and Bam, along with Jimmy, they have to have career-best years, for us to be in the hunt.”

Such is easier offered from the front office, not faced with the daily challenge of facing 14 others in the locker room and having to convince them that they are essential, as well.

And yet it didn’t stop at that moment. Instead, even with playoff-level contributors such as Kyle Lowry and Duncan Robinson, and even with first-round pick Jaime Jaquez Jr., the theme even from coach Erik Spoelstra has remained about the three-headed cornerstone.

So even though the rough patch to start the season, even with Monday night’s game against James and the Los Angeles Lakers at Kaseya Center offering a reminder of a previous Big Three era, there has been no shying from the reality that the 2023-24 Heat will be a product of the productivity of Butler, Adebayo, Herro.

“We’re just going to need a whole lot more of Jimmy, Bam, Tyler, all playing to their strength zones, helping each other and bringing out a higher level out of everybody else,” Spoelstra said.

“And they’re not only making each other better, they’re making their teammates better, and that’s what we need from them.”

With the offseason losses of Max Strus to the Cleveland Cavaliers and Gabe Vincent to the Lakers, the depth isn’t quite as formidable as during last season’s run to the NBA Finals.

That has made that triplicate mandate arguably more necessary than the previous four seasons that Butler, Adebayo and Herro have played together.

At least for now.

“Yeah, we get paid the most and with that comes responsibility,” said Herro, in the midst of his best start to a season. “And it’s up to us to be on the same page as a trio, to lead these guys and lead our teammates, so that they can follow us and we can do this as a collective.

“It’s not going to be me or Bam, or Jimmy and Kyle. It has to be together, and that’s how we’ve made a run in the past, in being connective.”

All amid an appreciation of what the Heat are not.

“We’re not the most talented team,” Herro said, “but I think we can be connective, and everything else in between, I think that makes a difference.”

The respect remains for the entire roster, something Adebayo has been charged with maintaining in his first-time role as team captain, with the hope that the likes of Josh Richardson, Haywood Highsmith, Thomas Bryant and, when able to return from his offseason knee issues, Caleb Martin can offer the type of support that the likes of Mike Miller, Ray Allen and Shane Battier offered to James, Wade and Bosh during the franchise’s Big Three era.

For now, Adebayo appreciates it is on himself, Butler and Herro to set a tone and lead the way.

“I mean we realize it,” he said. “We’ve had our conversation. Obviously we have our internal conversations of what we want the season to look like, how we want it to go.

“Me, Jimmy and Tyler need to take care of business.”