It'd be quite surprising if Miami Heat head coach Erik Spoelstra decided that the third preseason game was going to be the moment when they went full dress rehearsal, especially considering that they're playing the same Minnesota Timberwolves team that they're opening the season against.
In theory, this is about the time you'd expect a team to put on a dress rehearsal for the regular season if there is indeed going to be one, but it didn't seem as if that was the plan. At least not in this exhibition game.
In the words of Spoelstra, when asked what the plan was going to be for the starters heading into Saturday night's clash, he was pretty bullish.
"I'm going to sleep on it. I'm going to think about it, mull over it."
There may not even be a full dress rehearsal coming for the Heat
At this point, considering that the Heat have already played their regulars for two preseason games, and if Spoelstra does give some guys a rest in this third one, there may be a chance that a full-blown dress rehearsal may already be off the table.
With just two preseason games left, you'd imagine that Spoelstra will want to get the non-rotation players as much work as they can get before making any final roster decisions. And honestly, the Heat may have already seen enough from their starting 5 and main rotation pieces.
In an ideal world, you'd want to see this new team try to gel a bit more before the start of the regular season, but that may not be the way Spoelstra elects to play it out. With roughly 10 days before the start of the regular season, it wouldn't be surprising to see the Heat give their regulars one more quarter of work in preseason game four, and then rest them before the season opener.
It's impossible to predict exactly how Spoelstra will handle this, but that shouldn't be the surprising route, especially considering how much of a veteran-laden squad this Heat team is.
Time will ultimately tell how Spoelstra wants to proceed with the final few preseason games, but at least when it comes to the team's clash against the Timberwolves, I have a hard time imagining that we're going to see the bulk of the starters when they open the season against each other in less than a couple of weeks.
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