NEW ORLEANS — For at least one more night, Erik Spoelstra could speak in terms of his glass being more half full, even amid these empty feelings for the Miami Heat, including Monday night’s home loss to a Utah Jazz team trying to lose.

With a loss Wednesday night to the New Orleans Pelicans and the middling middle ground will prove all too real, with the Heat entering that game at 28-27, with an eight-day All-Star break to follow.

As if the loss to a Utah team that only can win this season by protecting a lottery pick at No. 8 or better (or else it goes to the defending-champion Oklahoma City Thunder) wasn’t bad enough, it robbed the Heat of the opportunity for consecutive wins for only the second time since the turn of the calendar.

So not even good enough at the moment to win two in a row.

“I don’t know,” Spoelstra said of the failure to develop any measure of continuity. “We’re working on it. That’s all I can tell Heat Nation.”

Spoelstra said he continues to see a team capable of more, even as the standings continue to blare the reality of an impending fourth consecutive season in the play-in round.

“Man, it’s a dedicated group,” he said of a roster that on Monday night had to go without sidelined Tyler Herro, Norman Powell and Pelle Larsson. “And I know there’s a resolve to forge ahead after disappointing games.

“There’s a professional approach. The guys want it. They want it so bad. So we’re going to get there. Based on my experience, if you just continue to forge ahead when it gets tough and it gets disappointing, eventually you get a breakthrough.”

Tough and disappointing sum it up pretty well at the moment.

In many ways, Spoelstra’s words come off as all too familiar to just over a year ago, when the Heat were mired in a 10-game losing streak after the NBA trade deadline that ultimately led to a 10th-place finish and third consecutive play-in berth.

“I believe,” Spoelstra said after Monday night’s disheartening loss, “and I know the locker room thinks that as well.”

So now, a team that has defeated conference leaders such as Oklahoma City, Denver, Detroit and New York, also has managed to fall to the lottery likes of Utah, Indiana and Sacramento, with the 15-40 Pelicans up next.

The belief is real, but so have been the results.

“I love the challenge of this group,” Spoelstra said as he went into the back-to-back set that opened with Sunday’s road rout of the Washington Wizards before Monday night’s loss to the Jazz. “I really do. It’s invigorating.

“This season has been frustrating. It’s been exhilarating. I see the possibilities. Probably people would roll their eyes when I say we have a huge upside. I don’t care. I know what I see. I know what I feel.”

A ride from empty to exhilarating to empty again, with one game to determine whether a .500 definition of mediocre at the All-Star break

“I also feel this incredible inconsistency,” Spoelstra said. “But we can go to the highest level, and it is frustrating. We’ve beaten all the best teams in each conference. We’ve had other teams on the ropes for large parts of the game.”

And then nights like Monday, when the Jazz pulled their top players midway through the third period, and essentially said — take my win, please.

For now, what isn’t lost is the locker room.

“We’re built for this, though,” forward Andrew Wiggins said. “We can overcome it. We just gotta hit our stride at the right moment. The right moment is now. We just gotta keep playing together, stick together through the hard times.

“We got the talent to do something special this year. We just gotta lock in and stay together.”

So now one game before the All-Star break for the Heat to be able to call themselves winners over the coming week.

“Going into the break you want to go in with a W,” center Bam Adebayo said, “then you have some type of momentum going into the second part of the season.”