MIAMI — On a team lacking a true superstar, cohesion has been a saving grace for the Miami Heat. Rarely, is the messaging questioned.

Now, that is not as certain, and on Tuesday night, certainly wasn’t evident.

It hasn’t quite reached the point of his players tuning out coach Erik Spoelstra.

Or has it?

Late during Tuesday night’s 112-91 loss to the Toronto Raptors, with the game all but decided, with the Heat careening toward their eighth loss in nine games, veteran guard Norman Powell took control of the huddle in animated fashion.

He later related that messaging, messaging that stands as concerning as the overall stumble that has the Heat at 15-15 and in eighth place in the Eastern Conference.

“It was a few times in the game where Coach draws up something or puts together something that we’ve got to go out there and execute, and we just totally do something completely opposite, just make it up, not having the attention to detail,” Powell said afterward, in a more even-keeled fashion than his courtside manner during the course of the game.

“So I was pretty frustrated, because it’s happened not only this game, but a few times in this tough stretch that we’re going through.”

It was a performance that made the Heat look nothing like a team that at one point had risen as high as No. 3 in the East when the going was good.

“We’re a young team, but we’ve got to focus on the details of the game,” Powell continued. “That’s going to help us get out of this losing streak, whatever we want to call it, this moment that we’re in, this spot that we’re in. It’s being better with the details of the game on both sides of the ball and how we want to execute and who we want to be.”

From a team that had been in lockstep on both sides of the ball throughout November, it’s as if offense and defense have come to fail Spoelstra’s team.

That players have sensed it. The coach has sensed it. Tuesday night’s loss to the Raptors crystallized it.

“We have a game and an identity that we can wrap our mind around,” Spoelstra said of when this season’s Heat can be at their best. “It’s about consistently bringing that kind of competitive force defensively, collectively. We’re a very good team defensively. We can be top five when we really commit to it and understand how important it is. Offensively, there’s things where it can look great at times. We can’t afford games like this. We haven’t had many — Sacramento and this, where really it just didn’t feel like we’ve got that competitive force. I’ve got to figure out why and correct it.”

So, yes, practice on Christmas Eve at Kaseya Center, for a team no longer deemed worthy by the NBA for a Christmas Day game, the Heat next to play on Friday night at the Atlanta Hawks.

“Got to be better, man,” center Bam Adebayo said. “These are the times where we need to obviously be closer together in these moments. We just got to figure it out as a whole.”

During this stretch of eight losses in nine games, the Heat rank 29th in the 30-team league in offensive rating, 19th in defensive rating.

“They both go hand in hand,” Adebayo said. “If you don’t make shots, we give up transition points. It’s like we stop talking on defense and now our other talk, on the other side, is we don’t really get no ball movement. We’re flowing into one-on-ones and trying to self-will it.”

It has turned into a moment for introspection.

“I think just, ultimately, we’ve just got to do more, dig deeper,” guard Jaime Jaquez Jr. said. “It’s one thing when you’ve got one bad game. But when it’s a lot of struggles, things not going our way, we’ve got to dig deep and find a way to win. If you only win when you make your shots, then you’re only going to win half the games. And we want to be better than that. We want to be a great team, so we’ve just got to dig deeper and bring more every single night.

“We’ve said what we’ve needed to say. We’ve just got to go out there and do it. I know we’re very capable. I think our guys — we’ve got a great locker room — it’s just collectively we’ve all got to come together and lift each other up. Right now, it’s a struggle. We’re going to get through this, I know we are. We’ve just got to do more.”