It was not an evening of elegance for either team.

That each group was coming off a Game 7 two days prior certainly had something to do with it. Both are more than capable of taking away another team’s strengths, too, and are comfortable working the shot clock in the half-court when the grind factor is turned to eleven.

But 35 combined turnovers are 35 turnovers, and 100 combined contested shots are 100 contested shots – including 64 total shots from mid-range. Of the 178 shots taken last night, 75 of them were off the dribble outside of 10 feet. There are reasons for why a game with an early frenetic pace eventually grew into a contested jumper-thon, and nobody cares about style points in a road playoff win, but ugly is ugly and the Miami HEAT won Game 1 ugly in Toronto.

“We’ve proven that if we don’t play well we can still win a game,” Goran Dragic said. “We can win with a big margin or an ugly win like tonight. This shows the true character of this team.”

The manner in which the HEAT opened the playoffs was never a sustainable thing. While shots only get tougher in the postseason, Miami responded to an increasingly difficult shot profile by posting consecutive shooting performances against the Charlotte Hornets that would make anyone outside of Steph Curry blush. But after Game 2 Joe Johnson said, flat out, that it was all fool’s gold – that the team was going to have to find other ways to win.

The search took some time. For two games in Charlotte all that shooting came to a halt as extended scoring droughts cost Miami a pair of games. It wasn’t until Game 6 on the road that the team was able to find a new path.

Get stops. Make shots.

That may seem reductive, even with the usual make-or-miss league line from coaches in mind, and it probably is. But the issue with Miami’s first two dominating wins against the Hornets wasn’t that their shooting was bound to regress eventually, it was that Charlotte was still scoring at an extremely high rate – a fact that Steve Clifford reminded the media of on a number of occasions.

Miami had to tighten up and defend. If they did, they had a roster full of Dudes Who Make Shots that could carry them home.

They were taken to the brink of elimination against the Hornets, but those last threes from Dwyane Wade only mattered because the defense was able to protect a two-possession lead for most of the second half of Game 6.

So while much of the focus in Game 1 will fall on Miami’s late-game foibles and Kyle Lowry’s incredible overtime-forcing prayer that will only get the tears-in-rain treatment from Father Time, the HEAT can feel good about their defense. All those shot types we mentioned earlier? Remember, those were for both teams. The Raptors took 33 pull-ups and 50 contested shots on their own as Miami held them to an offensive rating of 90.1 – 16.9 points per 100 possessions behind their Top-5 regular-season mark.

Miami didn’t have to do anything as extreme as staying home on every shooter as they did so effectively in taking away Charlotte’s threes. It was still a two-man game in the middle of the floor for the guards and Hassan Whiteside, with only some side-to-middle work with Jonas Valanciunas giving them consistent trouble, but the HEAT’s wings were able to keep their feet in the paint a little bit more while still allowing just seven spot-up opportunities to the Raptors, per Synergy Sports.

And with Lowry clearly not playing like his usual self, that meant a whole lot of work for DeMar DeRozan coming off screens with a guard chasing him from behind, Whiteside in front and help feinting in from the sides. It’s a little like trying to score in Jamiroquai’s hypnotic Virtual Insanity room.

With the defense taken care of, the shot-makers mattered.

Much of this was encouraged by Toronto’s chosen defense. The Raptors can close off the paint as well as anyone, but they added some emphasis on shutting off threes and staying home on shooters.

“I know that they stayed home with me,” Deng said. “A lot of times guys are coming off. With Charlotte, guys were shrinking [into the paint] and we were spraying it. They’re really focusing on taking away the three.”

So while Miami made eight, they only took 11 threes all night. No, this isn’t a team that typically shoots a high volume, but when Charlotte was packing the paint the HEAT were willing to take their attempts go over 20. With passing lanes more limited in Game 1 and the Raptors changing up their pick-and-roll coverages well – including some timely wing switches against Miami’s small-small actions – Miami wound up with go-make-a-play type opportunities.

“[With] Charlotte, everybody is in the paint,” Dragic said. “You cannot get in the paint. Here they treat us more one-on-one. With our ability to drive we can go at them.”

And drive they did. According to NBA.com/Stats, the HEAT had 36 drives in Game 1. They only scored 10 points off those drives, shooting 5-of-19, but that’s an area due for positive regression. Results will come if you can continue to get into the paint.

As long as the defense is there, it still comes down to making shots. And it counts for something that Miami has assembled a group of players that are more than capable of finding opportunities when the offense – just 12 assists in Game 1 – is short on guzzolene. Dragic has his step-backs, Wade and Joe Johnson can snake and bob their way through defenses with the best of them and Deng has proven to be an incredible over-the-top shooter at the power forward spot.

The offense will need to be better. These are still the guys that are supposed to be able to make plays. And they made just enough to take a game on the road.

The victory may have been the metaphorical prize hog at the county fair, but a blue ribbon is a blue ribbon.