MIAMI –At this point, all Erik Spoelstra is seeking is traction, any possible way for the Miami Heat to regain their footing amid what has grown into an eight-game losing streak.

“We have to put our feet into the dirt and hold our ground at this point,” Spoelstra said, with Monday night’s 116-95 loss to the New York Knicks at Madison Square Garden giving him the longest losing streak of his 17-season career and the Heat their longest losing streak since going 15-67 in 2007-08.

Like so many of the Heat’s losses during the skid and even prior, there were signs of hope.

But this time only briefly, with a 12-0 start and a 13-point lead in the first quarter. No matter, it added up to the Heat’s 18th blown double-digit lead of the season , matching the league-worst total of the league-worst Utah Jazz. The Jazz’s latest loss, a 111-97 Monday night setback against the Chicago Bulls, allowed the Bulls to pass the Heat in the East play-in race, dropping Spoelstra’s 29-39 team to 10th place in the East.

As a matter of perspective, if the season were to end today, just to make the playoffs, the Heat would have to win an initial play-in game in Chicago and then win again at the loser of the Orlando Magic-Atlanta Hawks other opening East play-in game to advance to a first-round matchup against the league-best Cleveland Cavaliers.

Otherwise, off to the lottery, as was the case after the Heat’s previous losing season, when they went 39-43 in 2018-19.

In the wake of that disappointment, the Heat drafted Tyler Herro in the lottery, added Jimmy Butler in free agency and wound up in the NBA Finals the following season.

This does not feel anything like that, with 2018-19 also the season the Heat celebrated Dwyane Wade’s retirement tour.

This time, just stark reminder after stark reminder of the depths realized a year after going 46-36 last season.

For large swaths of the losing streak, Spoelstra has spoken optimistically about gains made even in the losses, of strides in incorporating Andrew Wiggins, Davion Mitchell and Kyle Anderson into the mix, the players added after Butler forced his move to the Golden State Warriors at the Feb. 6 NBA trading deadline. The Heat have gone 4-15 since.

Now there is the reality of having fallen and not necessarily with the ability to get back up. While a five-game homestand that opens Wednesday night is up next, the opening two games are against the 38-31 Detroit Pistons and the 44-25 Houston Rockets. As it is, the Heat went 0-5 on the five-game homestand that ended with Friday night’s loss to the Boston Celtics.

“We’re all getting tested,” Spoelstra said after the Heat were swept in a season series by the Knicks for the first time since 1992-93 and only the second time in the Heat’s 37 seasons. “I’ve said this before – including myself, there’s no one that’s absolved from this.

“I have not come up with enough answers for this team. I have to do a better job. Our group has to do a better job.”

While an injury due to a leg contusion left the Heat without Wiggins on Monday night and necessitated yet another lineup change, it hasn’t been the starts that necessarily have been problematic amid the slide . . . it’s been just about everything that has followed, including the Knicks’ 41-15 third quarter on Monday night.

“That’s the thing that we’ve been racking our time, our brains, everything, trying to find solutions for that,” Spoelstra said of the failure to sustain, maintain, retain. “We have not come up with solutions and we’ve pretty much tried everything.

“This has been one of the biggest challenges of a regular season that I’ve been a part of. And we just have to stay the course.”

Actually what is needed is a change of course. Monday night’s indignity included a national audience on ESPN. The network next will be at Kaseya Center on Wednesday night to continue to chronicle this fall of a franchise that just two years ago was in the NBA Finals.

“It’s human nature to stack up some of these memories and let that affect us for the next game,” Spoelstra said.

While Monday largely was somber in the postgame locker room, emotions did rise when the issue of capitulation was raised.

“Anyone would just quit and get comfortable with losing and feel sorry for themselves,” Herro said of the natural reaction. “But obviously, nobody feels sorry for us. We have to dig ourselves out of this hole. It all starts in this locker room.”

Captain Bam Adebayo agreed.

“When we step out there, we’re going to compete,” he said. “Now as far as the games and the losses, you take that game by game. But every night we step on that court, I’m going to make sure I play hard and everybody else does.”

So eventually light at the end of the tunnel?

“It’s frustrating,” said forward Jaime Jaquez Jr., who started Monday in place of Wiggins. “We’re going through the dark days right now. I think as a team, we just got to come together and find a new fight these last however many games we got left.”

That would be 14 in a regular season that ends April 13..

“We have to collectively get our mind right, where all of these losses don’t necessarily, they don’t have to impact the next game,” Spoelstra said. “That’s the mental discipline and that is a tough human condition to fight.”