It’s about who can get to who.

For years that has been one of Erik Spoelstra’s most common refrains when it comes to postseason basketball. And for five games, despite two Miami wins, it has too often felt as though it was Toronto driving the war rig as the series slipped into the primordial ooze of a slow, half-court grind.

Things changed Friday night, with Miami staring down the end of its season, and it was a difference in part manufactured Spoelstra. There’s never a perfect answer when you’re down a prominent big man but Spoelstra, the coach who has suited up for battle with the Indiana Pacers and Oklahoma City Thunder using Shane Battier as his power forward, went with rookie Justise Winslow as his nominal starting center.

Did it work?

Overall, yes. It didn’t work just because Miami forced a Game 7 with a 103-91 victory. It also didn’t fail just because the lineup was merely a plus-two in 13 minutes of action. Instead, the lineup change worked because it got the HEAT to look more like their up-tempo, attacking selves than they had at any other point in the season.

“It has been well documented that our offense hasn’t looked like our offense and you have to credit Toronto,” Spoelstra said. “We felt like we’ve been playing in mud. We looked a little bit more like us tonight.”

And so did, Spoelstra added, Goran Dragic.

We’ve discussed on numerous occasions how Dragic can be a transformative catalyst, more so than anyone else on the team really, for how he can help Miami’s offense hit another gear. It’s not always easy for him to do so, at least by himself. He may be one of the league’s best one-man fast-breaks, but it’s the three-four-and-five man breaks which make things pop. Those are always easier for Dragic to lead when there is speed and shooting on the floor.

With such an arsenal available to Dragic from the jump on Friday, Miami’s pace had a little extra nitrous.

“They did an excellent job of setting the tempo,” Dwane Casey said.

“They were playing up-tempo,” Cory Joseph said. “They were getting rebounds and pushing it at us and having us on our heels.”

Miami played with its fastest pace, albeit still fairly slow in the context of the rest of the league, of the series since Game 1 – though they only had five fast-break points to show for it. But while earning open-floor attacks are a desirable byproduct of pace, it’s the profound effect it has on Miami’s entire offense that often proves to be most crucial.

Once the tempo is established, you get a Dragic who can miss a good look at the rim early and stay the course. You can go from the miss, to the defense overcompensating on Dragic’s penetration and opening up passing lanes, to Dragic getting right back to the rim.

Per NBA.com’s SportVU tracking numbers, Dragic had 21 drives in Game 6 and he shot 8-of-12 with two assists on those drives. The team shot 18-of-35 at the rim, with the attempts being highly encouraging.

“When we play more aggressive and everybody is attacking, that’s our game,” Dragic said. “As long as we can get into the open court, that helps too.”

Of course, every attacker needs spacers just like every comedy needs a straight man. Miami not have many elite shooters on the floor when they go super-small, but they have enough threats that Toronto has to at least think about where everyone is on the floor while Dragic or Wade runs a pick-and-roll. And with Bismack Biyombo playing well off Winslow in the middle of the floor, it’s a massive boon when Winslow can hit from deep in the first few minutes of the game.

Miami shot 4-of-10 on corner threes, and the 10 is just as important as the four. With their speed and length Toronto had all but eliminated the most efficient non-dunk shot on the floor for the HEAT. Having five players on the perimeter complicates that coverage for the Raptors who, as in that Dragic drive-and-kick earlier, have to not only shrink the paint on the drive but collapse with the right people.

And when you can pull the other team’s primary big away from the rim with a rim-rolling small-ball center with good court vision – perhaps offering a glimpse into the days of future future – the uncontested blessings come down.

None of this works without work on the glass. While Winslow may seem to be a key piece to all of this – he is – for his ability to combat the greater size of other players, the HEAT are switching a ton defensively with this lineup. That means while Winslow may begin a possession defending Biyombo, but by the time a shot goes up it could fall on Dragic or Wade or Johnson to box out the opposing center.

And while one of Miami’s wings takes a big man out of the play, just as Battier once did, it’s up to everyone else to finish the possession.

“We had four or five guys crashing the glass. If we weren’t getting a rebound, we were trying to tip it out,” Joe Johnson said. “We can’t just leave it to one guy who is boxing out, somebody has to come down and help. We were doing that all night.”

The Raptors only came away with eight offensive rebounds all evening as Miami’s starting lineup finished with a defensive-rebounding percentage of 81.8 percent – a decidedly elite mark and a huge win for an undersized group.

“We have to be a five-man rebounding team,” Spoelstra said. “We don’t have a glass eater anymore – someone who is going to get 17-18 rebounds. Now there have to be blockouts. Those eight offensive rebounds felt like 20 with how physical it was.

That’s how Toronto is built, they’re going to try to beat us up and make us pay for that.”

“If they’re going to play small we have to make sure we dominate the glass,” Casey said.

That Miami was able to hold as strong on the glass while still pushing the ball up the floor was quite the feat. Teams that have rarely played this small shouldn’t be able to do that. Now they have to do it again.

Because Casey, it seems, doesn’t feel the need to adjust.

“The [HEAT starting] lineup had nothing to do with it,” Casey said. “It was just being able to contain the basketball and keep it under control.”

When Miami came back at the end of Game 4 behind this same small lineup – with Lowry eventually fouling out of the game – Casey did match-up as he took Biyombo off the floor and played Patrick Patterson at center. Afterwards, Toronto’s coach spoke mostly to how the HEAT and especially Wade at the time were beating guys in one-on-one situations. Regardless of who is on the floor, Casey said, they have to clean up the simple containment plays.

He was right, as far as results go. Toronto came out at home in Game 5 playing incredible one-on-one defense regardless of matchup and it pushed them out to a large early lead.

So if Toronto cleans up their defensive mishaps again in Game 7, can Miami’s ultra-small look still work? Surely, but it’s no infinity gem. Miami has to once again own the defensive glass, push the tempo and hit their open looks as they come. Dragic doesn’t have to repeat a 30-point performance, but Miami will need the same aggression with the floor wide open just as Toronto will need Lowry to continue attacking the paint with so little rim protection in his path. With such disparate lineups in use for both squads and few adjustments in sight, both sides know quite clearly what needs to be done with a season in the balance.

Even though Spoelstra has changed the game, it’s still about who can get to who.