MIAMI _ A lack of Monday motivation might have been expected.
There was a poignant pregame ceremony honoring Kobe Bryant. There was the nasty ankle issue that took Jimmy Butler out of Friday night's loss to the Los Angeles Clippers. And there was the calf injury that kept Goran Dragic out of that previous Miami Heat outing.
But through it all, Erik Spoelstra's team persevered against the Orlando Magic, pushing to a 113-92 victory to improve to 21-2 at AmericanAirlines Arena.
With Butler playing on, Dragic returning and intermittent chants of "Kobe!" providing perspective a day after iconic Los Angeles Lakers guard died in a helicopter crash, the Heat rebounded from the loss to the Clippers to move back into second place in the Eastern Conference behind Bam Adebayo's third career triple-double.
"Overall, I told the group that that was a solid, professional win," Spoelstra said.
The Heat played with purpose, and perspective.
"As everybody was chanting, I still felt great sadness," Spoelstra said of the "Kobe!" moments.
A 22-4 run to open the third quarter helped the Heat push to a 24-point lead before pushback from the Magic drew within 85-71 entering the fourth quarter.
Amid continued balance, there were 20 points, 10, 10 assists from Adebayo, 19 points and seven assists from Butler, as well as 21 points from Duncan Robinson and 14 from Dragic.
"My teammates keep pushing me to be better," Adebayo said.
Five degrees of Heat from Monday's game:
1. A Bam reminder: Adebayo offered Eastern Conference coaches a reminder with his 5-of-6 start from the field that included three early assists in his first stint _ and kept going from there.
Tuesday is the deadline for coaches to submit ballots for All-Star reserves, with that announcement coming Thursday.
"I just feel in my heart, Bam's play has spoken hard enough to be an All-Star," Spoelstra said.
Adebayo finished one assist shy of his career high, set earlier this season against the Atlanta Hawks.
2. Closer to whole: While the Heat got Dragic back, starting guard Kendrick Nunn missed a second consecutive game due to a sore Achilles.
"We have depth for a reason," Spoelstra said.
What the Heat haven't had has been completeness, with Justise Winslow still out with his lower-back bone bruise.
"We haven't really been able to get to that enough this season, and I'm not complaining about it," Spoelstra said. "There's a lot of teams way worse off on that injury card than we are. We'll cross that bridge when we get there _ it's a good bridge; it goes to good places."
3. Short and sweet: Even with Butler starting and Dragic available, the Heat still got to Dion Waiters in the rotation, entering at the start of the second period as 10th man.
Waiters' second appearance of the season included a quick assist for a Dragic 3-pointer on his opening stint, showing that 7-Eleven lives on. Then there was another Waiters assist on the Heat's next possession, that one for a Derrick Jones alley-oop dunk. And, finally in that sequence, a Waiters 3-pointer on his first attempt from the field.
That early five-minute stint proved to be Waiters' lone stint.
4. Business like: The Heat got the Magic on the second night of a back-to-back set, with Orlando coming off a home loss Sunday to the Clippers.
Now the tables are turned, with the Heat hosting the Celtics on Tuesday night, with the Celtics idle Monday.
Tipoff for Tuesday's game has been changed from 7:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. in a wake of the postponement of the Laker-Clippers game that was to follow on TNT doubleheader.
5. Not this time: While noted Heat killer Nikola Vucevic closed with a 13-point, 14-rebound double-double, it came on 5-of-15 shooting.
Now the question is whether the Heat can keep a good man down, with the teams to meet again Saturday at the Amway Center.
