Caleb Martin can bring some ‘Heat Culture’ to the Sixers. They could use it.

The Miami Heat have been the team and franchise that the 76ers have aspired to be, or should. That assertion is true on multiple levels and in multiple eras. From 2010 through 2014, they reached four NBA Finals and won two championships while LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, and Chris Bosh were driving the Three Stars Equals Awesomeness race car that Daryl Morey is trying to rev up again with Joel Embiid, Paul George, and Tyrese Maxey. But it’s the more recent iterations of the Heat — the kind of team they have been lately — that are more relevant to the Sixers now.

And what kind of team have the Heat been lately? They’ve been overachievers. They punch above their weight. They’re a tough out. They win playoff series they aren’t expected to win and reach postseason rounds they aren’t expected to reach. They advanced to the Finals in 2023 after winning just 44 games during the regular season and nearly getting bounced in the play-in round, and that achievement would be regarded as a total anomaly if it weren’t for the fact that Miami had reached the Eastern Conference finals in 2022 and the COVID-bubble NBA Finals in 2020.

Yeah, it can be an eye-roller anytime Pat Riley, Erik Spoelstra, or anyone else brings up “Heat Culture,” and this is a franchise that touts itself as “The Hardest Working, Best Conditioned, Most Professional, Unselfish, Toughest, Meanest, Nastiest Team in the NBA.” (Don’t you dare forget the capital letters.) The thing is, it’s kind of true. From Jimmy Butler and Bam Adebayo to Duncan Robinson and Tyler Herro, from the way they build a roster to the way their players compete, the Heat maximize their resources. No, they haven’t won a title in 11 years, but they leave no doubt that they are willing to wring themselves dry in the attempt.

“It’s a by-any-means-necessary type of thing,” Caleb Martin was saying Tuesday at the Sixers’ headquarters in Camden. “Doesn’t matter how big your responsibility is or how small it is. Everything matters. Everything counts for what we’re trying to do. It’s kind of an all-hands-on-deck type of thing.”

Martin would know. He has spent the last three years as an embodiment of the typical Heat player: undrafted, signed as a free agent by another team (the Charlotte Hornets), released, signed by Miami, developed by Spoelstra and his staff into someone who has been solid during the regular season and something more than solid during the postseason. Now he’s a Sixer, and at the reported price of four years and $32 million, they get the kind of wing defender and outside shooter every team needs in the modern NBA. And if Martin can contour the Sixers’ culture so that it more resembles the Heat’s, however slightly, that wouldn’t be a bad thing.

Kyle Lowry did a bit of that shaping last season, but at such a late stage of his career, he can’t be the potter he once was. He had and can have only so much effect. Martin is and will be a more consequential player. His example and words will matter more.

“That’s what I do,” he said. “I don’t try to do it. That’s just who I am. A lot of people who have played with me can vouch for that. I can’t really turn that off. People will feel that, and that’s one thing I take pride in — injecting the group with that. I can be very vocal, and I also think I can communicate with people differently. Some people take it vocally, and some are more nonverbal, and I think I have a solid feel about that.”

This is old hat around here, but it bears repeating: The Sixers have had plenty of talent for a long time. That talent has come in different forms and with different styles of play, but always, there has been talent. What there hasn’t been is an identity, a sense of who the Sixers are and who they’re supposed to be and what foundational principles they can rely on in a playoff series’ most decisive moments.

» READ MORE: Joel Embiid and Tyrese Maxey aren’t enough. The Sixers need something even more important.

Martin is coming from an organization where, as one example, a young player who tends to grab every rebound with only one hand will have Spoelstra tell him to grab every rebound with two hands. Then, in a drill, Spoelstra will make the young player — no matter what round he was drafted in, no matter what his salary is — grab every rebound with two hands. “Until it’s right,” Martin said. “And even if you do it right, he’s going to make you keep doing it until it’s instilled.”

He was asked what the source of that culture was. Did it come from Riley and Spoelstra, from the top down, or did it bubble up organically from the locker room? Spoelstra is a marvelous coach, but surely it helps that he has Riley — one of the sport’s greatest winners, a guy who in 2010 could drop a bag of championship rings on a tabletop to entice James to sign with the Heat — backing him up.

“I think it’s both,” Martin said. “That’s their journey, how they’ve found their way to their success, and they try to replicate that and instill that with the type of players they bring in. That’s why guys who are in my position find success there.”

New place, new position for Caleb Martin. Maybe for the Sixers, too, finally, if he can bring some Heat.