MIAMI — Now. Or never.

Either the Miami Heat pull out all the stops, see if even that is enough, or else move on from what they have cultivated for nearly a decade, this group of hard-working, persistent, industrious players that, at best, had succeeded in Jimmy Butler’s shadows.

Add Giannis Antetokounmpo, and then having a group of hard-working, persistent, industrious players that succeed in the shadows is fine.

Because Giannis Antetokounmpo was, is and will continue to be a better player than Jimmy Butler, whose coattails the Heat were able to ride to the 2020 and ’23 NBA Finals.

But at a certain point, “Hardest Working, Best Conditioned, Most Professional, Unselfish, Toughest, Meanest, Nastiest,” doesn’t mean much when you can’t escape the middle of the pack and in no way can speak of being a contender.

In fact, even before this latest round of Giannis conjecture began, and even amid the increasing trade swirl, when you listen to the Heat locker room, it’s more about escaping the play-in round for the first time in four years than any sort of championship contention.

The players, they know.

At the start of Pat Riley’s Heat stewardship in 1995, the question — with the Heat not having won anything since their 1988 inception —  was whether something as mundane as a divisional banner ever would hang above the Heat’s court.

Now, more than three decades after Riley’s arrival, it’s as if there is a locker room hopeful of little more than at season’s end being able to bellow, “We’re No. 6!” (And therefore out of the play-in.)

The reality is that this is not only about the players, but rather something ownership and management have recognized, as well. It is why every effort, including only carrying 14 players on the standard roster this season, has been the approach, with little reason to enter the luxury tax, and therefore the repeater tax, with a roster marginal, middling and mundane.

With Giannis, that would change in a heartbeat. Perhaps not this season, as Giannis deals with an ongoing calf issue. But the outlook instantly would change to something other than, “We’re No. 6.”

Potentially not overnight, however, as with each of Riley’s major builds, from adding Antoine Walker, Jason Williams, James Posey and Gary Payton a season after Shaquille O’Neal arrived in 2005, to building out the Big Three of LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh with later championship components Shane Battier, Chris Anderson and Ray Allen.

The Arisons and Riley have been very good about going all in when it is winning time.

But without an addition of Giannis, winning time remains an abstract for this rendition of the Heat. Even when healthy and at their best, Bam Adebayo, Tyler Herro and Norman Powell aren’t leading men on a true championship contender.

To his credit, after bravado and bluster turned to reasoning and reality, Riley moved off his championship-or-bust mentality. And there have been good times with Adebayo and Herro. Ditto for some of the best moments this season with Powell.

But what last summer and then these ensuing results showed is this team was not a Powell away.

You can patch holes all you want, try to make it work in recent seasons with the likes of Kyle Lowry, Terry Rozier and Powell, continue to attempt to punch up in class.

As, all the while, the Cade Cunninghams, Victor Wembanyamas and likely soon the Cooper Flaggs pass you by. Each drafted after a step back by their respective teams.

The upcoming draft is so loaded that it is possible that soon the same could be said for the teams that land Darryn Peterson, AJ Dybantsa and Cameron Boozer.

Land the pedigree of a Giannis, and the kid stuff can be bypassed, as the Knicks did with their trade for Jalen Brunson and the Cavaliers with their deal for Donovan Mitchell.

But come up short for Giannis, quite possibly through no fault of their own, and a Heat meeting of the minds needs to follow.

Because at some point you have to move off and move on, as the Heat did at various stages with Tim Hardaway, Alonzo Mourning, Shaq, Dwyane Wade, Goran Dragic, Butler and other onetime cornerstones. Mourning and Wade eventually returned, but only after the Heat first moved on without.

Such moves can be particularly painful, but you either get a cornerstone as a foundation, or you turn those corners toward something bigger, better, more enduring.

So either get what already is in place some elite help, as in a Hail Mary for Giannis.

Or, yes, time to look in different places for different faces.

IN THE LANE

EXPIRATION TIME: While much has been made about the Heat potentially being positioned to make a better offer to the Bucks for Giannis Antetokounmpo if Milwaukee were to wait for the offseason for such a move, that reasoning is somewhat flawed. Yes, such a delay would allow the Heat to open up more draft capital than the two first-round picks the Heat currently are allowed to deal. But there also would be the factor then of matching salaries. Yes, Tyler Herro‘s $33 million for 2026-27 would still be on the Heat’s books, but Andrew Wiggins has the right to opt out of his $30.2 million for 2026-27 with his player option, Norman Powell would be a free agent without an extension, and Terry Rozier‘s expiring $26.6 million for this season no longer would be in play. Yes, Nikola Jovic would move up to $16.2 million on the first year of his new contract, but in the 2026 offseason, Giannis’ salary for cap-matching purposes  moves up to $58.5 million. The match at the moment would be far simpler for the Heat than one the 2026-27 cap calendar.

ONLY NOW: Three seasons ago, when Heat guard Dru Smith took a misstep off the ledge of the elevated court in Cleveland and shredded his knee, the NBA simply moved on to the next thing. But now that Los Angeles Lakers star Luka Doncic tripped over the same shoddy architecture at Rocket Arena, the NBA is all over it. According to The Athletic, while Doncic avoided an injury anything close to Smith’s misfortune, the league responded with a comment of, “While improvements have been made to the arena floor over the years to address this issue, the NBA and the Cavaliers are revisiting the situation given the incident.” It is about a 10-inch drop from the court to the bench area, the NBA’s lone arena with such a gap. For Doncic the upshot was simply a turned ankle. But Lakers coach JJ Redick said the situation should have been long resolved. “It is absolutely a safety hazard,” Redick said. “And I don’t know why it’s still like that. I don’t. You know, you can lodge formal complaints. A lot of times you don’t see any change when you lodge a formal complaint.” Of his incident, Doncic said, “It wasn’t a great feeling, and, looking back at the video, I think I got a little bit lucky.”

NOT A FAN: When it comes to former Heat forward Jae Crowder, the love remains lost for Bucks coach Doc Rivers. As the Bucks falter in the midst of this Antetokounmpo mess, Crowder took to social media to again reflect on the decision of the Bucks to dismiss Adrian Griffin in favor of Rivers midway through the 2023-24 season. “We were 30-13 (by the way). To bring in Doc. This is what started the avalanche,” Crowder, 35, posted. That had Rivers with a rebuke. “It hurts us all when you see somebody (do that), but usually there’s a reason behind it,” Rivers said, according to The Athletic. “Usually it’s called playing time, and you know that for sure.” And then Rivers took it a step further, “I always use the David Chappelle line, ‘When the titans are failing, the cowards will come out and crow.’ And I’ve always thought that’s got a lot of truth to it.” Crowder, a key component to the Heat’s run to the 2020 NBA Finals, last played in the league last season with the Sacramento Kings.

THE TOLL: For those who doubt the seriousness and complexity of the NBA’s concussion policy, take it from former Heat guard Jamaree Bouyea, who now is with the Suns and returned last weekend against the Heat after seven days in the league’s required protocol. “It’s tough. You’ve got to pass a bunch of stages. I don’t know how many stages it is. I think it’s five I want to say,” Bouyea told the Arizona Republic’s Duane Rankin. “It’s a bunch of non-contact stuff that leads up to all the contact stuff,  treadmill running for 30 minutes and stuff like that, and on-court workouts and then you finally can do some contact stuff. It’s a tough battle because you feel any type of symptoms, you can’t come back. You’re not going to sit there and lie about it. It was a tough battle to fight through all the symptoms.”

NUMBER

1. Times since the 2003-04 that the Heat will play the same team five times during the regular season, which will be the case when the Heat host the Magic on March 14 after falling to 0-4 against Orlando this season with Wednesday night’s 133-124 loss at Kaseya Center. The last time the Heat played the same team five times during the regular season was against the Brooklyn Nets in 2003-04. The fifth game vs. Orlando is the product of the teams meeting Dec. 9 in an NBA Cup quarterfinal. It will be the third time the Heat have played the Magic five times in a season (also in 1992-93 and ’93-94).