MIAMI ¯ Amid the ongoing search for consistency, the one constant that remains from coach Erik Spoelstra is that the Miami Heat are — or at least should be — better than their record.

That was the message he left as his team headed into its eight-day All-Star break after Wednesday night’s 123-111 road victory over the New Orleans Pelicans, a result that left his team at 29-27 and in eighth place in the Eastern Conference.

“Everybody is looking forward to it because our guys have been really pushing through,” Spoelstra said of a schedule that has the Heat playing an NBA-high 17 sets of back-to-back games this season, with Wednesday night’s game completing the latest run of three games in four nights. ‘While we’ve had guys out, and we’re not making any excuses about it, but we’ve been pushing for, it feels like, weeks.

“And we’ve had some really tough losses where we’ve played really well.”

That’s when Spoelstra paused, to work around a now-famous quote from NFL coaching legend Bill Parcells.

“That’s the untold story about this,” he said of this ride that has included having guard Tyler Herro available for only 11 games this season and having played the final game ahead of the All-Star break also in the absences of sidelined Norman Powell, Andrew Wiggins and Pelle Larsson. “You are ultimately what your record is, but we feel differently about that.

“We’re playing really good ball. We just need to be a little bit more consistent with it. Our defense is shaping up. That’s getting a whole lot more consistent. And then offensively, I think when we get our guys back, I think we’re going to be a really dangerous offensive team. We can be fourth in the league in scoring with large parts of our rosters on the sideline. Just wait until we get our guys back into the fold.”

The hope remains for a Herro return from his rib injury after the All-Star break, with the Heat’s schedule resuming Feb. 20 on the road against the Atlanta Hawks.

“He will be back. Yes, for sure,” Spoelstra said. “I don’t have a timeline exactly of when that will be. We’ll see. We’ll see how he progresses.”

So, if nothing else, hope at the break.

“Man, just a hungry team, very hungry. We got a lot to prove,” said forward Jaime Jaquez Jr., who scored 23 off the bench Wednesday night. “We got a lot to still do in this season. The beautiful thing about it, we got a lot of games left, still. But this is going to be a big push for us.

We’re going to be a hungry team.”

Jaquez said even while shorthanded, Wednesday night was a solid takeoff point.

“Extremely important.,” he said. “We wanted to get this win. We needed to get this win, being completely honest, just for momentum. Coming after the break, we know it’s going to be a big push for us and it started with this game. We take that into the break, build on it. And when we come back, just be ready for a big push ahead.”

Center Kel’el Ware, who headed into the break off Wednesday night’s 16-point, 12-rebound double-double, said it would be nice to see what it looks like with something closer to full health.

“I mean, yeah, hopefully we can get everybody back, especially I feel like we should,” he said. “I feel like we should have everybody back. Everybody should be healthy. Everybody take some time off and we can come back stronger.”

And then back to the grind of trying to avoid a fourth consecutive trip to the play-in round.

“Now everybody can kind of decompress, get away for a little bit and come back ready to work,” center Bam Adebayo said, after leading the Heat with 27 points and 14 rebounds in New Orleans.

So what can this team ultimately be?

“We’ll see,” Adebayo said.