Erik Spoelstra said it and he said it, in some form or fashion, often following Miami’s Game 1 loss in Philadelphia.

“We don’t think they felt us.”

That may sound like a generic coaching platitude but it describes everything the HEAT want to do and be on the defensive end – today, last year and a decade ago. No matter who their head coach has been, no matter what specific defensive scheme they’re trying to follow, this is a team that has long been determined to make sure you know who you’re playing. They want you to be bothered, they want you to be annoyed and they want you to be frustrated.

When the 76ers scored 130 points in the first game of the series, they were none of those things. They ran every quick, precise, this-is-the-beautiful-game action just as they intended to, creating one spot-up look after another as Miami spent most of the evening in reaction mode.

So for the next two days they talked about little else than making sure they were felt.

“We wanted them to be the ones complaining,” Justise Winslow said. “We wanted to be the more physical team, the aggressors.”

By all accounts, they were. The HEAT had just four deflections in the first game and 27 in the second. The 76ers scored 127.8 points per 100 possessions in their win, but just 99.3 per 100 possessions in their loss as their assist rate dropped dramatically. The team that shot 18-of-28 from three finished Monday night at 7-of-36. Philadelphia still closed a 16-point late-game gap to just two before Dwyane Wade heroics sealed the 113-103 victory in the final minutes, but it was a game played on Miami’s terms.

“It has nothing to do with the magic plays or the matchups, it's not that,” 76ers coach Brett Brown said. “There was a spirit in which they played with tonight that was desperate.”

Sometimes the most important adjustment is just doing what you do and doing it better, but Erik Spoelstra did make some minor changes that were certainly felt in a dominant 34-13 second quarter.

For most of Game 1 the HEAT, with Winslow and James Johnson taking the bulk of the responsibility, did what we expected them to do with Ben Simmons. They sagged well off their mark, waiting patiently in the paint where help could help, and it didn’t seem to bother Simmons or the 76ers much at all as he confidently whipped 14 assists to shooters and cutters. In Game 2, the change was that the HEAT kept changing.

Early in the second Winslow was sagging off Simmons, even getting him to take the sort of jumper he rarely ever takes.

So far, so standard.

Soon after, the HEAT got back to what they so often did in the regular season. They pressed all the way up. They made Simmons feel them.

“It’s just something different,” Tyler Johnson said. “You can’t show [Simmons] the same thing every time. I thought it was important just to change the flow of the game.”

About a minute of game-time later, the HEAT went into another press in an out-of-bounds situation with Winslow denying Simmons. They got the steal, and they scored.

Two press possessions. Two turnovers.

While the HEAT are wont to press just about any team in the league it makes particular sense against the 76ers, who despite all their offensive weapons generally only have one primary ballhandler on the floor between Simmons, TJ McConnell and Markelle Fultz. If you deny or pressure that ballhandler, it either forces other players into roles they aren’t used to or it delays their offense. And if you can delay the offense for a team that took the second-most shots in the league in the first eight seconds of the shot clock – a shot type worth 1.17 points per attempt – that’s a victory. Especially if that delay frustrates that playmaker.

“It’s a pester, it’s an annoyance,” Kelly Olynyk said of the press. “In the grand scheme of things it’s not doing much, but it’s doing a lot. It’s one of those things where, if you’re that guy that’s getting pestered, it’s like, ‘Yo, enough of that’. It was big by [Winslow].”

Simmons, for his part, admitted the physicality got to his team.

“The second quarter was definitely where they punched us in the mouth and we didn't respond the right way.”

Now, you see the press work twice in a minute and you probably think it makes sense to keep it up. But on the very next possession after that steal-and-score, the HEAT were back to their soft coverage, jamming up the driving lanes when the ball was on the floor.

We’ll get back to the coverage on Simmons in a moment. The other major improvement Miami made was in not just pressuring anyone in position to make a pass for a good shot, but anyone in position to take a good shot. The 76ers run fewer pick-and-rolls than most teams. When they did, the HEAT fought through contact and contested the ball. Handoffs are more typically Philadelphia’s action of choice and the HEAT focused on, in the words of both Tyler Johnson and Dragić, making their opponent ‘miss a moment’. Just getting a hand in the way to influence the action and knock it slightly off rhythm in order for everyone to get back in defensive position was enough, leading to all those deflections and the lack of threes and 0.58 points per possession on the 76ers’ handoffs.

Until Joel Embiid returns, which he could for Game 3, Simmons is still the focus. He didn’t even have a poor game by his standards, scoring 24 points on 17 shots to go with eight assists and just two turnovers. The HEAT aren’t going to claim to have stopped him. They merely want to slow him and, perhaps most importantly, force him to be great by constantly, and subtly, changing the reads he has to make. Just look at all the different depths at which James Johnson began possessions against Simmons in the second half.

Simmons might have had a good game by his standards, at times simply brute-forcing his way to the rim, but his team scored just 96.4 points per 100 possessions with him on the floor. That was the worst Philadelphia’s offense had performed with Simmons in the game since February 25 – also against Miami.

Reductive though it may be to put it this way, Miami forced Simmons to go through great lengths to get his while making it much, much tougher for his teammates to get theirs.

The question, now that Miami has sprung a few more defensive looks on their opponent, is whether it can keep working. The sheer effort and physicality sure can, but they aren’t likely to catch the 76ers off guard with the same pressure again. By the time the third quarter rolled around, Brett Brown was designing plays specifically to beat it.

That’s fine, when you pull back and look at the series as a whole. The 76ers took Game 1 behind Brown’s insertion of Ersan Ilyasova into the starting lineup at halftime. In Game 2, the HEAT focused on attacking Ilyasova in pick-and-roll while taking the win behind timely use of pressure and the run it begat. If an adjustment earns you a win, it did the job.

“We felt like tonight, how we approached the game, it went perfectly,” Dragić said.

But playing hard, smart and with force can’t be a one-game adjustment. Whether or not Embiid returns for Game 3, the way Miami played in Game 2 has been their blueprint for winning all season long. That’s not something you surprise another team with, that’s the requirement you put on yourself.

As James Johnson put it, “This is who we are.”

That isn’t something you adjust. That’s something you make your opponent feel.