National Basketball Association

Heat set for 1st extended road trip of season

Published Dec. 5, 2010 4:09 p.m. ET

foxsports

Sure, the players in the Miami Heat locker room all knew each other before the season began.

They just didn't know much about one another.

To hear LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh tell it, one of the many reasons the Heat got off to a slower-than-expected start this season is that many interpersonal bonds in the locker room were still being formed. Dealing with that was a primary theme of the now-infamous team meeting that happened in Dallas after a loss on Nov. 27.

Perhaps not coincidentally, Miami is unbeaten since.

''When you learn about someone personally, it's easier to protect them out on the court,'' James said. ''It's easier to fight for them out on the court. We've been able to play games and win games and us three, personally, we're figuring it out.''

The next week figures to help that ongoing bonding process.

The Heat play in Milwaukee on Monday night, the start of a four-game swing that represents Miami's longest road trip of the season so far. Miami opened the year with road contests on consecutive nights at Boston and Philadelphia, and since then have gone on six different one-game trips.

Miami also visits Utah, Golden State and Sacramento on this trip. The Heat hope it'll be a springboard to bigger things in the second quarter of the season, now that James, Wade and Bosh - the ballyhooed signings of free agency - say they're starting to click in ways they envisioned when the trio of stars came together.

''We've all played together in spot times, All-Star games, Olympics, and it's not the same as it is here in Miami,'' Wade said. ''We're all good friends, and when you're good friends and you're new, sometimes you don't want to say something to step on someone's toes. And that meeting kind of let us know to be friends and be real with each other.''

An 89-77 win over Atlanta on Saturday night at home was Miami's fourth-straight win, matching a season-high, and pushed the Heat (13-8) five games over .500 for the first time. All the things percolating a week ago - fallout over James colliding with Heat coach Erik Spoelstra during a time-out in Dallas, speculation about Spoelstra's job security, reports that the Heat were laden with internal strife - seem forgotten now.

Indeed, what a difference a week has made.

''We didn't cave in at the beginning of the week,'' Spoelstra said. ''We just collectively decided 'How do we make this better?' Now we're going to embark on our first extended road trip, where it will just be us and there will be adversity out there. And hopefully, I feel we're a different team than we were a week ago.''

Entering Sunday, only three teams - Dallas (9), Denver (6) and Boston (6) - had longer current winning streaks than Miami.

''I don't think the world was coming to an end,'' Bosh said. ''We knew that we lost games that we were capable of winning. We were right there. And I think we were standing in our own way. Just to talk about it, it was needed. We needed to talk and kind of feel each other out and do the things off the court that really nobody sees in order to bring this team closer together and be more of a unit.''

The process has been one for Miami since the year began. Even before, really.

Bonding was the biggest reason why Miami took the surprising step to move it training camp to Hurlburt Field, a U.S. Air Force installation in Florida's Panhandle. After an early season loss in New Orleans, Bosh and James spent most of the flight home talking together, getting to know one another in more than a basketball sense.

The Heat have no shortage of veterans - but this ''band of brothers,'' as Spoelstra calls it, has yet to seamlessly mesh.

''Everybody is getting in their rhythm,'' Heat guard Mario Chalmers said. ''We are just learning about each other and we are getting more comfortable with each other. The more comfortable we get, the better we're going to play.''

That's shown during the winning streak.

Miami has shot better (nearly 51 percent in the last four games, compared to 46 percent beforehand), defended better (83.3 points allowed on average during the streak, compared to average of 100.1 in its previous 10 games), and put up three straight games of not exceeding 10 turnovers for the first time all season.

On the road, James figures the group will only get closer.

''Those are the best times,'' James said. ''We can come together and do some things as a team that you can't really do too much when you're home or when you have these long homestands, because people go home to their family after practices and things like that. When we're on the road, it's just us. It's just us, and it's going to be a great opportunity.''