MIAMI -- The Miami Heat have been perhaps the breakout team of this NBA season. After acquiring Jimmy Butler, most people thought they'd be an improved squad from the one that finished last season 10th in the East with just 39 wins, but few people saw this coming. 

Entering play on Friday, the Heat are 18-6, good enough for the No. 2 spot in the East. They're 11-0 at home. They have a top-10 offense and defense. They have the seventh-best net rating in the league. At 14-1 against teams below .500. they've taken care of business versus lesser competition, the mark of a good team. 

They have some signature wins, too. They beat the Bucks and Raptors on the road. They throttled the Rockets by 29. But they've also had some losses against upper-tier teams that appeared to expose them as a good-but-not-great squad that's not quite deserving of contender status. They lost to the Lakers by 15, the Nuggets by 20, the Sixers by 27. 

Friday night, they get another shot at a statement. 

LeBron James and the Lakers are in town, and they are on some kind of tear. Winners of 15 of their last 16, the Lakers are tied with the Bucks for the best record in the league at 22-3. They're 12-1 on the road. LeBron and Anthony Davis are both on an MVP track. LeBron could be First-Team All-Defense. Davis could win DPOY. This team is a beast, and if Miami wants to really stamp its early season success, this is a golden opportunity to do so. 

As December games go in the NBA, this is a big one. Again, the Heat are undefeated at home, Listen to them talk, and they absolutely believe they belong in the contender conversation. It's getting harder to disagree with them. ESPN's relative power index, which factors in strength of schedule, ranks them as the sixth-best team in the league, notably ahead of the Nuggets, Rockets, Sixers, Jazz and Mavericks. 

But those aren't the true big boys of the league. Those teams are good, just as we know the Heat to be. But the Bucks, Clippers and Lakers, those are the big boys. Those are the contender measuring sticks. One game in December won't tell us who Miami is, but it'll give us an indication -- even without the service of Justise Winslow, who has been ruled out for Friday as he continues to deal with a lower back strain, and potentially without Goran Dragic, who has missed the last five games with a groin injury. 

Not having those two guys will certainly hurt the Heat. Winslow would be a primary defender on LeBron. Dragic has been great off the bench. But this Miami team scraps, man. Jimmy Butler is playing like a top-five MVP candidate, and his continued emphasis on prioritizing playmaking over scoring has gotten this whole offense into a great rhythm. 

It's not an accident that Miami has the No. 6 assist percentage in the league, per NBA.com. This is a tied-together group that willingly, happily, moves the ball, and it's starting with Butler, whose seven assists a game are by far a career-high. Beyond that, the Heat have the second-best rebounding percentage in the league and the second-best true-shooting percentage.

So the Heat shoot, pass and rebound at an elite level. They defend and score at a borderline elite level. They have an elite player. Why, again, are we not classifying them as an elite team? 

Perhaps we should be. Most of the markers are there. Bam Adebayo is a budding two-way star. In fact, that might be selling him short to say he's budding. He's probably going to be an All-Star this season. Every elite team gets great peripheral production, often from unexpected sources, and Kendrick Nunn and Duncan Robinson certainly fit the bill. Nunn might well win Rookie of the Year. On Tuesday against Atlanta, he and Robinson became the first pair of undrafted players on the same team to combine for 70 points. Robinson hit 10 3-pointers. 

Another marker of great teams? Great coaching. We know Erik Spoelstra qualifies. He gets the most out of the talent he has to work with year after year, and he has more talent on this team than he's had since the Big 3 days. The Heat's drive and kick offense is perfectly suited for their personnel. They have creators. They have shooters. They have passers. And on Friday night, they have an opportunity to turn all that into one giant early season statement.