HEAT TRY TO ‘STAY IN THE MOMENT’

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MIAMI – Game 7 of The Finals is not just any other game, but the Miami Heat are trying to treat it that way. They want to “stay in the moment” but not get caught up in it, if that makes any sense.

So Heat coach Erik Spoelstra did nothing special at Thursday morning’s shootaround. There was no talk about the consequences of winning or losing Game 7 (9 p.m. ET, ABC).

“You can’t focus on the victory,” Spoelstra said. “You can’t focus on the reward. The only thing you can focus on is the task. So this morning, all it was was the shootaround, prep. It wasn’t anything more. There was no special words or speeches I gave them. The most important thing they can do now for the next eight or 10 hours is get off their feet.”

Spoelstra believes his team is prepared to stay undistracted and focus on the task at hand, because they’ve dealt with quite a bit of outside noise since putting together the big three three years ago.

“Probably the world we’ve lived in has helped us prepare for that more than anything else,” Spoelstra said. “From the first time we came together, it was about everything else. And we had to learn how to compartmentalize and stay in the moment. That’s helped us build some discipline of mind.”

And Chris Bosh doesn’t want to think about what the next 48 minutes of basketball mean to the big three’s legacy.

“We’re not thinking about the grand scheme of things,” Bosh said. “All this legacy stuff and the era, we leave that all to the barber shop talkers and the sports critics and let everybody sum that up. We just come out there and play basketball.”

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Spoelstra hinted that Udonis Haslem would see action in Game 7 after giving Haslem a DNP in favor of Chris Andersen and small lineups on Tuesday.

“It was probably one of the tougher things I’ve ever done. That wasn’t necessarily the notion. The game just didn’t present itself. But he’ll be ready and the opportunity will be there tonight. He’s right there on my mind, so likely he’ll get his chance tonight.”