MIAMI — As he fought to the finish on Wednesday night in Stockholm, with some of the basketball weight of his country on his shoulders, Pelle Larsson ended on the attack.

Making the Swedish guard the same Pelle Larsson the Miami Heat saw during summer league last month in Las Vegas. Making him the same Pelle Larsson that Heat coach Erik Spoelstra moments earlier on Swedish television called “a bully with the basketball.”

As part of his European non-vacation this summer, Spoelstra is in the midst of taking in some of the Heat’s international talent. Wednesday night, that meant watching Larsson play as leading man for Sweden’s national team in an exhibition. Thursday, it meant on to Belgrade to watch Heat forward Nikola Jovic play for the Serbian national team in an exhibition against Slovenia, when Jovic closed with 18 points on 7-of-8 shooting in a blowout victory.

As for Sweden’s 88-87 loss Wednesday night to  Estonia, to a degree it didn’t matter, with this latest round of international exhibitions merely the leadup to next week’s start of EuroBasket.

So it hardly was distressing that Larsson’s driving floater rimmed out at the buzzer in the loss on his 13-point night, but arguably instead meaningful that the 2024 second-round pick out of Arizona played to the finish in attack mode.

Coach Spo in Sweden 🇸🇪🔥 pic.twitter.com/8NCIcjWdMH

— Miami HEAT (@MiamiHEAT) August 20, 2025

“What he does are the things that we value,” Spoelstra said of Larsson during his halftime interview on Swedish television. “He’s so tough. He makes winning plays. He’s a great role player. He fits around guys, the best players. And he will continue to get better, because he has a great work ethic.

“And outside of that, he’s just a great human being. We like that balance, of players that really know how to compete between those four lines, put it all out there to try to help your team win, but also can be good people and to get along with the other teammates, and he does that extremely well.”

In summer league, Larsson played as a primary ballhandler. But Spoelstra clarified during his interview in Stockholm that does not mean there are plans to cast Larsson in such a role this coming season.

Still, Spoelstra indicated that Larsson has earned a rotation role, which would be a step up from last season’s limited action.

“We just want to have him as an all-around player,” Spoelstra said, with the Heat to open training camp Sept. 30 at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton. “Now, he’s a very smart player, he’s a heady player, very skilled. And so during summer league we just had him handle the ball for us, more for his player development. It’s not that we’re trying to turn him into a point guard. But the more skills he can add, it can help your team.

“And he’s a physical player. We call him a bully with the basketball. He knows how to draw fouls. He knows how to get into the paint. He’s improving his passing. And we think with improved ballhandling, he’ll be able to take advantage of those skills even more.”

While much of the focus of the Heat’s youth movement has centered on recent first-round picks such as Jovic, Jaime Jaquez Jr., Kel’el Ware and Kasparas Jakucionis, the greatest jump from draft pedigree to potential 2025-26 role likely could come with Larsson.

“You could see at the end of the year he carved out a bigger role,” Spoelstra said.

For Spoelstra, an international summer is nothing unusual. He was an assistant to Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr at the 2023 World Cup in the Philippines, a Kerr assistant last summer for Team USA’s run to gold at the Paris Olympics, and is considered a frontrunner, along with the Los Angeles Clippers’ Tyronn Lue, to guide USA  Basketball at the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.

For now, the international work is about scouting the Heat’s participants in EuroBasket: Larsson, Jovic and Italian forward Simone Fontecchio.

“We follow the international game quite a bit, and we have an international team this year coming up,” Spoelstra said, with the Heat’s roster also including Lithuania’s Jakucionis, Russia’s Vlad Goldin and Canada’s Andrew Wiggins. “So I think that’s exciting. That’s why we’re over here seeing a few of our players.”

During his interview in Sweden, Spoelstra was asked about the Heat’s overall prospects, after a 37-45 regular season and record-setting opening-round playoff-series loss to the Cleveland Cavaliers.

“Well,” Spoelstra said, “hopefully we’re going to be a lot better than last year. We had to really navigate quite a few things during the season. But we did make the playoffs. The playoffs did not go how we wanted it to go, but the league is tough.

“We pride ourselves on finding a way to compete for a championship every single year, so that’s what our standard is, that’s what we’re aiming to do this year, and I think we have a good group. We have an exciting group of young players like Pelle. And we have experience, and have that competitive drive that we look for. So it’s a matter of putting it together and getting out there and competing for it.”

Originally Published: August 20, 2025 at 7:10 PM EDT