The Miami Heat is about to learn quite a lot about itself

In a Miami Heat season that has had all the volatility of the Nasdaq market during earnings season -- arrows up, down and everywhere -- Dwyane Wade has consistently kept his talk straight. He has scored 1,378 points on the floor, to boost his career total to 20,190, but hasn't felt the need to score empty points with the public, by trying to sell fans something that may not be so.

So, when asked after Monday's practice if he knew the collective character of this team, a team with no current rotation players with whom he's ever played in a postseason, he was light on the sugar.

“Well, I mean, I know the regular season collective character,” Wade said. “I don't know the playoff. There's different levels. From a regular-season standpoint, we have shown the ability to compete, compete most nights, not be perfect but we're gonna compete. And we bounce back pretty good, you know.”

Especially from the loss of Chris Bosh: 18-9 since the All-Star break, and now in the third seed with two games remaining.

“We've done a great job of sticking together through it all,” Wade said. “When moments have looked real dark for us, we've all stuck together. So this team has been a good unit all year. We've grown together. But that's the regular season. So I don't know what to expect yet when it comes to the playoffs, because that's a different season.”

That season, that playoff season, hasn't started yet, not officially. But it will be tough to tell the difference Tuesday night in Detroit, or Wednesday night in Boston. And this will start to tell Wade, and the rest of us, how mentally and emotionally tough this team is, this team with so many contributors who are so new to this, whether it's the two rookies (provided Justise Winslow plays) or the manchild in the middle (Hassan Whiteside) or even the point guard (Goran Dragic) who hasn't played in the postseason since 2010 and has never started once there.