Ira Winderman: Culture again allowing Heat to keep the winning within

Ira Winderman, South Florida Sun-Sentinel on Nov 9, 2025

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MIAMI — There was a time when Culture wasn’t a jersey, wasn’t a court design, wasn’t more marketing than meaning.

There was a time when Culture held such touchstone value that it practically stood as corporate secret at 601 Biscayne Boulevard.

It was about the aura, about sacred regard. It made Culture special. It made the Miami Heat unique.

That is why the latest rollout of the final variety of jerseys the Heat wear this season — the black-and-pastel Vice Nights version that debuts at Wednesday night’s game against the Cleveland Cavaliers at Kaseya Center — comes with meaning.

Because there will be no Culture jerseys this season.

No Culture court to remind of “the hardest-working, best conditioned, most professional, unselfish, toughest, meanest, nastiest team in the NBA”.

“That campaign is over,” said Michael McCullough, the team’s Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer. “And now we are into Vice.”

It was time.

Over the past two years, be it because of the jerseys or the court, it had become clear that Erik Spoelstra was over constantly being asked to define the team’s culture. Courteously, the Heat coach spoke of how the public platform had become somewhat overblown.

“It’s something we believe in. It’s for us. It’s not for everybody,” he often said of the team’s culture.

Or, as center Bam Adebayo has said, “It’s like if you’re not in it, you wouldn’t understand. That’s the thing about Heat Culture. If you aren’t a part of it, then you don’t know.”

So, no, not easily transferable to a jersey, a court, a T-shirt.

To a degree, there arguably stood no better example of the team’s culture (we now can again move comfortably into lower case) than Duncan Robinson, whose relentless work ethic and regard for the Heat’s values created a takeoff point for an enduring NBA career that now plays on with the Detroit Pistons.

“They just have standards that they want to live by,” was how Robinson summed up the team’s culture during an appearance on The Young Man and The Three podcast, giving credit to Heat President Pat Riley.

Yet by the end of his Heat run, even Robinson recognized that Heat Culture (in its capitalized form) had become bastardized.

“I will say, and obviously — I love the organization and I have benefited from it a lot. We had some great runs and great times — I will say, when they started to sort of shift into like a marketing thing, I think it lost a little bit,” Robinson said during that podcast appearance in April.

“Then when we had like the Culture jerseys and then on the court, I think it just like ripened us up for people to just take shots. I’m not saying it was bad marketing.”

It wasn’t. And there remains a Court Culture apparel line that does not nearly as much blur the line between apparel and a value system.

But sometimes too much becomes too much, as Jimmy Butler, now with the Golden State Warriors, noted.

“I’m not saying it in a bad way, but I think it’s a little bit overused talking about the Heat Culture,” he said. “It is a great organization. But I think a large part of that culture is you get guys that buy into a winning mindset.

“Whenever you have really good players, you can name it whatever you want to name it.”

To appreciate how the Heat’s basketball side not only values its values but also protects its principles, consider a few years back when 10 of Spoelstra’s core values were left posted on a video monitor during a media period in the locker room.

To an outsider, the talking points might have come off as pithy, items such as celebrating a teammate’s success.

The Heat were not happy any of it became public. Why? Because these were their values, standards for their success, not intended for public consumption.

With success comes curiosity, with curiosity comes interest, with interest comes marketing. Few do that better than the Heat, with Riley often acknowledging as much, mentioning McCullough by name.

But there also has to be balance.

As one member of the Heat staff confided, “We got that creed. It was never talked about. It was just how we went out and the way we carried ourselves. Marketing turned it into selling, in which it was a good selling point. But it becomes oversaturated and it becomes just a saying instead of something you live by.”

So now, once again, Vice … but not Culture.

Sometimes all you need is to know who you are.

And sometimes it is better to keep it that way.