“We’re starting to get to know each other in a much more meaningful way,” says Miami coach Erik Spoelstra, “because we’re going through something uncomfortable”

“We’re starting to get to know each other in a much more meaningful way,” says Miami coach Erik Spoelstra, “because we’re going through something uncomfortable”

If you’ve opened X since the start of the NBA season, you’ve probably seen the tweet: “New team, same Giannis.” The inescapable ad is for Kalshi, the prediction market Antetokounmpo partnered with in February, but it doubles as a tidy summation of one of the most fascinating experiments in the NBA this year.

The new team is the Miami Heat, where Giannis arrived in a summer blockbuster that seemed to upend the balance of power in the East. The deal marked the end of Giannis’s 13-year tenure with the Milwaukee Bucks, the only franchise he had ever known. Now he’s in South Beach, playing for a new coach (Erik Spoelstra), with a new costar (Bam Adebayo), and with a revamped supporting cast that Miami’s front office scrounged together over the summer. It’s a lot to get used to: a new offense, new culture, and even new wildlife.

Meanwhile, we're seeing the same old Giannis. The 31-year-old two-time MVP is still one of the most dangerous downhill attackers in the NBA; he leads the league in 2-point field goals per game for the fifth consecutive season. He’s still a relentless competitor, and the league’s spotlight remains trained on him. Even in his new digs, Giannis is an object of fascination as his team tries to put the right talent around him to become more than the sum of its parts.

Through 11 games, Miami is 5-6. Early-season issues were expected, as the team had only part of a single offseason to replenish its depth and put well-fitting pieces around Giannis and Bam—a fierce and talented yet slightly awkward star pairing. But the Heat’s problems have been loud since the season tipped off, when Antetokounmpo’s big offensive debut (35 points) was overshadowed by Anthony Edwards and the Timberwolves in a 25-point Miami loss. 

A few weeks later, the Heat are heading home after their first long road trip of the season, a West Coast swing with stops in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Sacramento, and Utah. Miami went 3-2, but it’s hard to know exactly what to make of that. The trip featured blowout losses to the Lakers and Warriors and too-close-for-comfort wins over the cellar-dwelling Clippers, Kings, and Jazz.

Meanwhile, the noise around the team hasn’t subsided. Doc Rivers, Antetokounmpo’s former coach in Milwaukee, publicly questioned Giannis’s basketball intellect on The Bill Simmons Podcast. (Rivers later apologized to Giannis for the comments.) After the loss to the Warriors, Giannis declined to speak with the media, suggesting some level of frustration. And on the floor, Miami’s pieces haven’t exactly fit to perfection as this group continues to feel itself out. 

“It's going to take time,” Adebayo told me last week. “We’ve got to get out of our comfort zones when it comes to talking, communicating, trying to figure it out, being vulnerable.”

Still, the energy around the team is one of cautious optimism, well-earned over years of problem-solving and overachievement under Spoelstra. In the halls of UCLA’s John Wooden Center two days after the loss to the Lakers, Heat luminaries surrounded the team at practice. On one end of the gym, Dwyane Wade and Udonis Haslem peppered Adebayo with advice. On the other end, the always-dapper Pat Riley glided around the room while Spoelstra shot around with some of the team. They’re adamant that their process and their system will make this team work.

But it gets late early in the NBA, and Miami is entering a make-or-break stretch of its schedule. Over the next two weeks, the Heat will play six teams that made the playoffs last season, starting with a matchup against the Cleveland Cavaliers on Thursday. From there, they will face a gauntlet of contenders: Detroit, Houston, OKC, Philly, New York, Cleveland, Atlanta. The road may be rough, but the Heat hope this stretch will ultimately lead to gold.

"We're starting to get to know each other in a much more meaningful way right now because we're going through something uncomfortable,” Spoelstra said last week. “That's when you really get to know somebody—not when it's all great or everything's going according to plan.”

The process of weaving Antetokounmpo into the fabric of the Heat organization began a few weeks after the trade was completed, when Spoelstra and other members of the Heat brass flew to Greece. The group toured Antetokounmpo’s childhood gym, shared meals, and swapped stories. It’s all part of a broader effort that defined Miami’s summer. 

“You want to welcome people that ain’t been there with open arms,” Adebayo tells me. “We try to get [Giannis] as comfortable as possible—where he understands our schemes, where he understands our play style, the standards, and obviously understanding what he wants out of this as well.”

The onboarding is a work in progress. 

Adebayo and Antetokounmpo, long on-court adversaries, constitute one of the most interesting star duos in recent memory; the Heat are the only team in the league whose two best offensive players are bigs, and neither one is a great 3-point shooter. Bam initially seemed a little out of sync with his new frontcourt mate—scoring just 11.8 points on 40 percent shooting through the first four games—but he and Giannis are learning how to coexist and magnify each other. 

“He's a downhill player,” Adebayo says. “So with downhill players, you’ve got to give them space.” 

Enter Klay Thompson, the 36-year-old sharpshooter Miami signed over the summer with a very clear job description: space the floor and knock down 3s. Two years ago, Thompson mused about finishing his career in similar fashion to Ray Allen, who became an invaluable contributor to Miami’s runs during the 2010s. After a slow start to the season, Thompson has been living out that fantasy in real time, shooting over 40 percent from 3 and establishing himself as an invaluable presence in the locker room. 

Thompson says that playing with Giannis is similar to playing with Stephen Curry in that the key is to "master energy." He says Giannis's max-effort competitive spirit brings the same out of him. 

(Thompson also says the move from Dallas to Miami has its perks beyond catching kickouts from a future Hall of Famer. “Being in South Florida—especially in a boater's paradise, a beachgoer’s paradise—it's a dream come true.” On off days, he likes to rent a boat and explore the Florida Keys. “It allows you to go to work in such a great mood every single day. I don't have a bad day going to work.”)

For other players with less streamlined roles (and boating acumen), the adjustment has proved more challenging. Last season, the Heat ran an egalitarian offensive scheme that deprioritized ball screens. This season, Spoelstra is using a stripped-down version of the same system, hoping to ease the transition to a Giannis-centric attack. 

“Sometimes we may make [our offense] more complicated than it has to be,” says Andrew Wiggins, who was sent from Golden State to Miami in 2025 as part of the Jimmy Butler trade. Last season, Wiggins was a reliable contributor, averaging 15.4 points and handling tough assignments on defense. So far this season, he’s averaging a career-low nine points and frequently looking unsure of himself, to the point that he was recently demoted from the starting lineup for second-year wing Pelle Larsson.

As a team, the Heat are scheming up ways to maximize a player they’ve spent more than a decade trying to stop. For years, they loaded up against Giannis using the “wall” defense, selling out to prevent his penetration. Now, they are looking for ways to help their new star get over and around it, while also trying to integrate him into their preexisting concepts.

“The game is simple for me [with Giannis and Bam],” Davion Mitchell, Miami’s starting point guard, tells me. “It's not like I got to make pick-and-roll reads every single time. I'm just getting downhill and playing fast. … [Giannis] can score on two people, but when he's scoring on four people, that's when it gets a little bit trickier.” 

For as much as the Heat still need to iron out some offensive issues, Spoelstra identifies the other side of the ball as the primary culprit for their rocky start. “We’re losing games because of our defense,” he told reporters during the West Coast trip. “That has to be our first, second, and third priorities.” Miami is 25th overall in defensive rating, despite the presence of several good defenders up and down the roster. Part of that is because the Heat have been unlucky with opponent 3-point shooting, but Spoelstra says the biggest need is dialing in the fundamentals: closeouts, defensive rebounding, effort, and communication. 

The Heat are banking on better team chemistry leading to better on-court results and are looking for ways to invest in that daily. On an off day in Los Angeles, Spoelstra took Bam and Giannis out for coffee and tea. Two days later in Sacramento, Giannis, Bam, and Bobby Portis studied film with Heat assistant Malik Allen, a former center who played 10 seasons in the NBA, looking for ways to clean up their process. When their session wrapped, I asked Adebayo to describe his ideal vision for the rest of the regular season. 

“Man,” he said, pondering. “I want us to be top three in defense, top five in offense. I don't know if we can get to that point. It's going to take time. We’ve got to get out of our comfort zones.”

Throughout its almost-40-year history, the Miami Heat franchise has become famous for pulling other planets into its orbit. In 2004, they acquired Shaquille O’Neal, pairing the 7-footer with Dwyane Wade, leading to the franchise’s first championship a year later. In 2010, Pat Riley enticed LeBron James and Chris Bosh to join Wade, leading to two more rings in four seasons. Five years after James departed, Riley traded for Jimmy Butler, which led to two more Finals appearances in the next three years. 

“When you put on that jersey, you inherit everything that we were a part of,” Udonis Haslem, Heat legend and current VP of basketball development, tells me following a team shootaround in L.A. “You inherit the rivalries, you inherit the losses, you inherit the pain, you inherit the wins. You inherit all those things.” 

In recent years, the Heat have also built a reputation as one of the NBA’s most resourceful organizations. Spoelstra is a master tactician who consistently does more with less. Miami is the best in the league at plucking rotation players off the scrap heap and putting them into roles where they can succeed. Even though the Heat finally have another superstar in the building, it’s this other aspect of their identity that will determine their success. 

After sending a monster trade package to Milwaukee to acquire Giannis—Tyler Herro, Jaime Jaquez Jr., Kel’el Ware, and Kasparas Jakucionis, plus three first-round picks, a swap, and one second-rounder—Miami has limited options to improve its roster. The savvy moves on the margins that have served the Heat well in recent years might be their only route to meaningful improvement.

Miami’s 21-point loss to the Lakers earlier this month was telling. A season and a half after the Luka Doncic blockbuster, L.A. has finally surrounded its star with a well-fitting cast that accentuates his strengths and covers for his weaknesses. The results have been eye-opening: The Lakers have the NBA’s best offense, and Doncic is the front-runner for MVP. But the Heat can’t afford to operate on that kind of delayed timetable. 

Antetokounmpo will turn 32 in December and has a mounting injury history that knocked him out of his last two playoffs and limited him to 36 games last season—especially concerning given that the NBA around him is trending younger. Miami will need a plan to manage Giannis’s minutes and workload to get him through the season (and postseason) intact. 

Heat officials often hearken back to their past success stories. Staffers and former players point to the underwhelming start to the 2010-11 season, when Wade, James, and Bosh stumbled to a 9-8 start at the outset of the Big Three era. That team went 21-1 in its next 22 games, went on to win 58 total, and steamrolled through the East playoffs before losing in the Finals. Their success in that era was built on sacrifice; Bosh accepted a limited offensive role, and Wade ultimately ceded his first-option responsibilities to James. This year’s Heat are less star-studded and not as deep—trading for a star rather than adding one (or two) in free agency—but will require a similar level of sacrifice and flexibility from the players at the center.

I asked Haslem, who played on the 2011 team, what advice he would have for Giannis and Bam. “I would tell both of them to embrace it. Embrace the change,” he says. “Giannis, some things are going to be a little bit different than what you did in Milwaukee. Embrace it. And with Bam, embrace it. Embrace your role being a little different. Embrace having to change the way you play the game a little bit. Embrace that your responsibilities offensively might be changing.”

Antetokounmpo and “Heat Culture” are two of the NBA’s most immovable forces. The give and take—on both sides—will be fascinating to watch in the months ahead. And despite the rocky start, the Heat believe they’re on the right track. 

“The biggest thing and the brightest thing about it is you got two guys [who are] willing,” Adebayo tells me.

“We’ll figure it out,” he continues. “I'd rather go through it now than go through it in April. It's good we're going through this now and trying to figure it out. We're obsessed with trying to figure it out.”