Last week something remarkable happened, but not quite for what actually occurred on the court.

In a generally forgettable home victory over the Blake Griffin-less Detroit Pistons, Goran Dragić brought the ball up and hit ahead to Jimmy Butler on the left wing in one of Miami’s oft-used pistol actions. They transitioned into a pick-and-roll, whereupon Bam Adebayo slipped the expected second pick and dove toward the rim. With a head full of steam, Butler got his feet in the paint, drew the attention of Andre Drummond and lifted up a soft pass.

If you’ve been watching the HEAT for the past few years, this was business as usual for an offense that has long prioritized its lob targets. What was unusual is that it was only Jimmy Butler’s ninth lob pass in his past five seasons, and his first in three years to his starting center – a typical lob target.

Were Butler an unwilling or incapable passer, that might make sense. But since his first All-Star season he’s put up nearly five assists a game. It was not a matter of could, it appears, but should.

“In a lot of other places I’ve been, we based a lot of stuff on pocket passes,” Butler said. “So we’re in the pocket, and I’ve always passed it to some really good bigs who can playmake as well. [In Miami] we have bigs that roll incredibly hard, and that’s what they’re taught to do here. Sometimes I like to pocket pass and let the big make the play. A lot of the times in the past I had bigs that would pick-and-pop, so it’s hard to throw a lob when they’re picking and popping.

“With different personnel come lobs, come pocket passes, come pick-and-pop.”

In other words, Butler had previously been operating in more of a ground game, and now it’s the aerial attack being emphasized. He’s still getting better at it, he says, as he learns to trust that his teammates will finish the plays, but that one lob does a fine job encapsulating the early days of Butler in Miami. The HEAT haven’t wanted him to come in and just be who he was. They wanted him to come in and also be a little of who they thought he could be. In response, Butler is posting a career high in assists (by any measure) with a usage rate right around his career norms.

“[They told me] we’re going to give you the ball and we’re going to expect you to make winning plays after winning plays, and make sure that we win the game on both ends of the floor. Coach Spo, Coach Pat, everybody here, they put a lot of trust in me to be able to do that.

“Coach Spo is always like, ‘Hey, Win the game.’”

Sure, it might seem a little strange for Butler to be shooting less than he’s shot in six seasons, but only if you were expecting a takeover. That’s never been who Butler is. There will be times when Miami leans on him to get a bucket, either to stop a run, get the team out of the mud or close a game, but at most others Butler is happy to let the game dictate.

“I’m not a volume scorer,” Butler says. “I take what the game gives me. I really like my teammates to be successful, man. Playing both sides of the ball, I think a lot of it comes from letting your defense translate into your offense. I’ll never forget Richard Hamilton told me that, and I’ve lived by that every day.”

More than capable of leading a star vehicle, Butler seems plenty happy being a character actor. Brad Pitt with a basketball, so to speak.

A little later in that same Pistons game, Butler found himself with a defender trying to front-the-post his way out of a bad situation. With a quick glance at Adebayo, holding the ball just above the elbow, Butler spins toward the rim for an easy look.

It was, fittingly, just the sixth lob of Adebayo’s career, with both of his oops this year going to Butler. That’s a connection you don’t often see for new teammates.

“You spend so much time together, you start learning each other’s tendencies,” Adebayo said. “I know if he’s on that block, and they overplay him, he’s spinning.”

“It could be as little as eye contact, a wink, a shoulder shake,” Butler said. “The game is simple. When you play with guys who are as smart as Bam, he’s going to dictate the game in a fashion that he wants to. I think it’s great to be able to play with him because, as much as I can think that I can make things easier for others, he makes it simple for everybody.”

This Heat team is full of players doing things that are new. Butler and Adebayo, with their newfound lob-throwing prowess, have never been asked to create this much for others. Goran Dragić hasn’t come off the bench in nearly a decade. Meyers Leonard has already met his career-high in games started. Justise Winslow, when he was healthy, had never been cast as, ostensibly, a full-time point-guard. Duncan Robinson has never before played so much, already topping a career-high in minutes. Kendrick Nunn and Tyler Herro had literally never played in NBA games before last month. So much of this is new, for everyone. Yet they’re second in the league in assist percentage.

If you watch them, you get it. Bodies are always moving, at least when they’re supposed to be. With Butler and Adebayo hunting opportunities for everyone else, the HEAT’s ecosystem is encouraging and producing more cuts than any other team in the league.

“It’s something that we wanted to emphasize for some diversity of our offense,” Erik Spoelstra said. “But you have to have guys that really embrace it, read it well, and ultimately that are effective with it.”

Getting the buy-in wasn’t too difficult, it seems. It helps that Butler is one of the better cutters in the league, and his willingness to play without the ball sets an example there as well – to hang a lampshade on it, notice the theme – has just about everyone making ghost cuts when defenses look away. Duncan Robinson had a grand total of one cut possession in his 15-game debut last season. In 12 games this year, he already has 8.

“It’s been an emphasis for our team this year, to be better at cutting,” Robinson said. “I figured it something that’s very controllable, it’s a skill you can get better at. So I’ve been trying to grow, watch film and get a feel for when to do it.”

This is going to be the cold-water paragraph, so if you just want to enjoy 9-3 for now feel free to skip ahead. As positive as the offensive vibes have been, the team still sits No. 14 in Offensive Rating, and that’s with them sitting Top 5 in three-point percentage. The average ranking is largely due to the league-leading turnover rate, itself not a huge surprise given all the newness we just finished discussing, but in the context of the franchise’s past few years it’s actually encouraging. Over the past three seasons they’ve been, on average, the No. 21 offense in the league. Just getting to the middle was low-hanging fruit, and that improvement has been just as important to their fifth-best net rating as having a Top 5 defense has been.

Undefeated at home, you can imagine what the post-game locker rooms have been like. Smiles and cries, without the cries. As the gravy train rolls along, it’s Butler who has remained most on message with constant reminders of, and we’re paraphrasing here, ‘Good game, let’s do it again.’

“Right now, everyone is on the bandwagon because we’re winning,” Butler said. “Let’s see what happens when everything is not going as well as we want it to go. Are we going to stick together, are we going to go separate ways? I hope not, but that’s when adversity sets in and that’s when we’ll know who we really are.”

It’s still early days. The HEAT will be tested more in the coming months, with tough scheduling and even tougher scouting reports looming. It’s not always going to look as easy as all the 30-assist nights have made it look. But they have a 30-year old All-Star who is willing to add a pass to his repertoire just because he was asked to, and through him an offense that’s been about the points on the board, not the names next to them.

If nothing else, the HEAT have shown themselves what they can be. And that’s an identity that goes beyond a win-loss record.