Preseason basketball is one big science experiment. Coaches value building consistency and familiarity but also want to use all sorts of lineups and sets just to see what fits. They juggle controls and variables, and the results tend to be all over the place. Everyone is searching for answers, which is exactly what this time of year is for.

Amidst all the experimentation, you also need to see exactly what you expected to see.

The pick-and-roll with Chris Bosh and Goran Dragic has been anticipated since Dragic was acquired last February. Even though that opportunity was robbed from all involved at the time, that hasn’t stopped anyone from projecting it as a centerpiece of Miami’s offense. Every team in the league probably assumed they would some day have to stop something they hadn’t even seen.

You couldn’t call it the team’s worst-kept secret because it wasn’t a secret, but after months of waiting we’ve finally seen the Bosh-Dragic pick-and-roll. Sparse few pick-and-rolls, but enough to know what was missed.

As they are wont to do, Charlotte was generally fairly aggressive against ballhandlers along the sidelines – yes, yes, it’s preseason – but you can see just how much space the threat of a Dragic drive creates. Just by being close to Bosh, Dragic brings two to the ball and Bosh ends up in the left slot with space to operate. The actual shot Bosh gets isn’t the easiest in the world, but the larger point is that a very simple action gets the defense to shift. If Bosh didn’t want to shoot, he had two players sucking to his side of the paint while Udonis Haslem (filling in for the injured Hassan Whiteside) ducks in, Dwyane Wade cuts and Luol Deng sits open for three.

Two really good basketball players stand next to one another, and options abound. A couple quarters later, the requirements for a good opportunity were again remarkably low.

Bosh moves to set a pick and that’s all it takes to get two on Dragic and Bosh back into space. This time he gets an open three – the same sort of look Channing Frye enjoyed for a year with Dragic – but again the defense is rotating. If the shot isn’t there for Bosh, he has Deng to ping it to.

“Tonight they were jumping really hard on me [on] pick-and-rolls and I hit [Bosh] a couple of times on pick-and-pop,” Dragic said. “He missed one three, but those are all good shots. I take that shot everyday. If he’s going to be open 20 times, he can shoot it 20 times.”

That second play was in a bit of a scramble situation, but the spacing on each of these plays – with Deng, Wade and Haslem clearing out in the second – is exactly what Dragic was talking about last week with regards to creating room to operate without a ton of traditional three-point shooters on the floor . Two on the ball-side, three on the weak-side, get the defense rotating and the ball will find space.

As above, so below.

For those of you that watched the game, you might be wondering why the HEAT didn’t run more pick-and-rolls if they were creating such good looks. In short, it’s probably too easy. Not easy easy, but easy in the sense that running ten miles becomes easy if you’re training for a marathon. The team is going to need to be able to execute some timing-intensive sets in order to capitalize on all their talent. Building up those habits, even if they lead to a fair amount of turnovers in the early going, is more important to the long-term success of the team.

“We’re trying to build that chemistry,” Dragic said. “That’s the smart thing to do, especially now. Try to run plays until the end and try to see all the options. Then when the real games come, you know where you can look because the first option is not going to be always there so you need to go to the second, the third option and then you always can finish with the pick-and-roll.”

“It’s easier because we’re both intelligent guys,” Bosh added. “We’re both unselfish guys and I think with an aggressive point guard and an aggressive power forward, you have a lot of room for improvement and good things can happen. Especially with my ability to pop. That’s always going to be there.”

If this all seems a little mundane, that’s because it is. Spoelstra isn’t going to be reinventing the wheel by running two-man game with two talented players, but the uncomplicated wins games every night in this league.

As far as trial runs go, Sunday night offered a few choice results that mattered. Now we get to look forward to a couple thousand more tests.

“We feel really confident that that can become a huge, huge part of our game,” Bosh said.