From dealing with a disgruntled star in Jimmy Butler to trading that disgruntled star, to an unusual amount of blown double-digit leads, to some of the lowest scoring fourth quarters in the league, to a stomach bug spreading around the locker room this week and more, it has been a rough season for the Miami Heat. But the Heat has reached the NBA’s All-Star break at the lowest point of its season yet, capping off its pre-All-Star break schedule with a bad 118-113 loss to an undermanned Dallas Mavericks team on Thursday night at American Airlines Center.

The Heat (25-28) now enters the break on its first four-game losing skid of the season and three games under the .500 mark for the first time this season. “Everybody understands the urgency right now,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said following Thursday’s defeat in Dallas before heading into the break. “There’s not a man in that locker room that doesn’t understand it. We’re disappointed, we’re frustrated. This is humbling.”

The Heat entered Thursday’s game with just 10 available players, missing Bam Adebayo (left knee contusion), Andrew Wiggins (stomach illness), Josh Christopher (G League), Keshad Johnson (G League), Kevin Love (personal reasons), Terry Rozier (stomach illness), Dru Smith (left Achilles surgery) and Isaiah Stevens (G League). The Mavericks had only nine available players, playing without Anthony Davis (left adductor strain), Daniel Gafford (right knee sprain), Kyrie Irving (right shoulder soreness), Dereck Lively II (right ankle stress fracture), Caleb Martin (right hip strain), Dwight Powell (right hip strain), Klay Thompson (left foot sprain) and P.J. Washington (right ankle sprain) against the Heat.

But the Mavericks were the better team down the stretch Thursday. After the Heat pulled ahead by four points with 5:09 left in the fourth quarter, the short-handed Mavericks closed the game on a 20-11 run on their way to the five-point win despite Heat All-Star guard Tyler Herro tying a season high with 40 points in the contest. “It’s a weird part of the season right now,” Herro said, with the Heat now idle until it resumes its schedule on Feb. 21 against the Raptors in Toronto. “We just made a trade, some guys that we lean on are dealing with illness.

You really can’t control that. I think our disposition and the way we came out could have been better. Just our energy and effort, I thought we could have gave a little bit more on both sides of the ball, especially defensively. “I feel like that’s kind of been the case for the last week or so that we’ve fallen short — Chicago, Brooklyn, Oklahoma City and then [Thursday]. So, all games that we put ourselves in a position to win and then there’s small pockets throughout the game where we’re not giving our effort, lack of attention to detail, lax.

And you see we’re in the games and then we lose by three or four, whatever it may be. But we’re there, we just got to figure out how we can sustain a 48-minute game so that we can win these games.” While Thursday’s defeat to the Mavericks doesn’t fall under this category, the Heat has already blown a double-digit lead in 13 losses this season. That’s the second-most such collapses in the NBA this season behind only the Utah Jazz.

The fact that there have been four single-digit fourth quarters in the NBA this season and the Heat has three of them has played a role in those in-game meltdowns. “We’re going to correct that,” Spoelstra said. “We’re going to get better. We have enough experience with it now. Our guys are fully aware of that. Everybody wants to be better in these situations when we’re up. We’ll take a few days off. I’ll get to work, the staff will get to work. We’ll do what we need to do. I promise, we’re going to correct this.” What’s the solution to the Heat’s in-game lulls? “I don’t have the answer,” Herro said. “Otherwise, we would do it.” But with only 29 games left in its regular season, the Heat needs to fix this problem quickly along with continuing to integrate its three recent trade additions (Kyle Anderson, Davion Mitchell and Wiggins) if it’s going to avoid having to qualify for the playoffs through the NBA’s play-in tournament.

With the NBA’s play-in tournament featuring the seventh-through-10th-place teams competing for the final two playoff seeds in each conference, the Heat enters the break in ninth place in the Eastern Conference and on track to appear in the play-in tourney for the third straight season. While it would require a major collapse for the Heat to completely fall out of the play-in tournament and out of playoff contention since it’s 5.5 games ahead of the 11th-place Philadelphia 76ers and 12th-place Brooklyn Nets in the East standings, Miami is also now three games behind the sixth-place Detroit Pistons for the East’s final playoff spot that doesn’t require having to take part in the play-in tourney.

“This is important,” Herro said of the sense of urgency needed during the final two months of the regular season. “This needs to matter to everybody in this locker room every single day, every single night, every single film session, shootaround, walkthrough, everything. I think that’s something that we also have to continue to improve at. The games aren’t the only thing that matter. Everything matters.” The Heat has at least one thing working in its favor, as 18 of the 29 regular-season games that it has left to play after the All-Star break will come at home.

Miami has just 11 road games remaining on its regular-season schedule, and six of those 11 road games come against teams currently with losing records. “This is what the league is right now, where all the teams are on any given week,” Spoelstra said. “These games, they have so much impact and so much meaning.” But the bottom line is the Heat is trending in the wrong direction. While the Heat enters the break with the NBA’s 21st-ranked offensive rating, 10th-ranked defensive rating and 17th-ranked net rating for the season, those marks have been worse lately. Since January, the Heat holds the league’s 24th-ranked offensive rating, 20th-ranked defensive rating and 23rd-ranked net rating.

“We just need to get on the same page going into these last 29 games,” Herro said. For now, Heat coaches and players will take some time off before reconvening for its first practice following the break on Thursday at Kaseya Center. The Heat’s goal will be to make the most of whatever is left of its season. “It’s going to be very important,” said Herro, who was the Heat’s only player selected for Sunday’s NBA All-Star Game in San Francisco. “I think, obviously, everybody needs time away, enjoy their breaks, take care of their bodies. I think we’re going to get healthy, which for the most part we’ve been this year. But just getting everyone after making that trade, just getting everyone together, spending time with each other and we’ll be alright.”