Like many consumers, the Heat’s Mike Miller thought he was paying extra for comfort and luxury. He was signing up, essentially, for an expensive VIP basketball experience, literally giving up millions of dollars for the idea of an easier work existence.

He had played his entire career without a single playoff victory, so he came to Miami in search of wide-open shots and blowout wins and a relevance that fans would applaud, not mock. Instead, of course, last season was a circus and a labor that concluded with crushing disappointment, Miller trying to play basketball at the end with thumbs that didn’t work. He is the only Heat player to admit that he thought all of this would be so much easier.

It took longer than he expected, took longer than any of us expected, but the Heat finally looks like the VIP experience. No Heat team — not the one that won 61 games, not the champion of 2006, not last year’s grandiose experiment — has ever been as overwhelming as what we’ve seen from this basketball team recently. What we are witnessing is the best product the Heat has ever put on the floor.

Up by 30-plus at Atlanta. LeBron James going 16 for 21 — his most efficient game ever — in a scorching of Milwaukee. Up by 29 at the half at Indiana and 21 in the first quarter against Cleveland. The whole thing was like watching mice scatter in the face of an oncoming cement mixer.

Teams don’t do this on the road, especially with this year’s manic and wearying schedule, but it probably ought to be noted that the NBA is filled with an uncommon number of godawful teams. The Bulls went one road stretch beating the Bobcats by 29, the Hornets by 23, the Nets by 19 and the Bucks by 23, too.

Still, Miami would like the playoffs to start right now, with this kind of health and confidence. The regular season is an irrelevant waste, little more than an opportunity for one of Miami’s key players to get injured before it actually matters. In terms of perception, this Heat team finds itself in the same position as LeBron: The successes in the regular season aren’t proof of strength to anyone, but the failures will be viewed as evidence of weakness to everyone. No-win until you really win, in other words.

Miami is 4-1 in games decided by five or fewer points this season, but you watch the storm that gathers if the Heat loses a close game late. The last week of blowouts don’t mean anything, unless of course one of those games had been a late loss, at which point that would have morphed into an echoing evidence of something.

This is where LeBron lives now. If he makes a buzzer-beater, people will demand that he do it in the playoffs. If he does it early in the playoffs, people will demand that he do it in The Finals. If he does it in The Finals, people will demand it in Game 7. And that’s fair, given his inexplicable meekness at the conclusion of last season. But it means that what we’re witnessing now is 66 expensive exhibitions.

Still, it is encouraging if you care about the Heat. The things we were expecting last season — Miami having so many options that the floor is wide open for shooters — are happening now. Miller is shooting 53.1 percent from three-point range, which is an absurdity. Ray Allen has never done that. Miller is percentage points from having the most efficient season from long range ever (Kyle Korver, 53.6). And Mario Chalmers, one of the league’s most improved players, is shooting 51.8 percent from the field and 47.3 percent from three. Keep in mind, Steve Kerr had the highest career shooting percentage from three ever, and it wasn’t as high (45.4) as what Chalmers is shooting out there now, and Chalmers, while one of the best in the league and invited to the three-point competition at All-Star Weekend, isn’t even the best on his team.

That’s how the Heat beats you — efficiency. The Heat takes a lot of shots because of pace and produces points at a more efficient rate than anyone in the league. They tilt the game’s percentages in their favor. Historically, teams that have the statistical rankings Miami does (top five in offensive and defensive efficiency) win championships, plural.

Just so we’re clear on what we are witnessing: ESPN’s John Hollinger invented an all-encompassing stat called PER that is the best measurement we have in advanced metrics of a player’s overall efficiency. Nobody in the history of the game has ever put up a better number than James this season. Nobody. The difference in efficiency between James and Kevin Durant, for example, is larger than the difference between Durant and Gustavo Avon. And Durant is third in PER. You know who is second? Dwyane Wade.

This can and will be dismissed as nerdy over-thinking until we have playoff proof, especially because there are no numbers that explain what the hell happened to LeBron in last year’s Finals, but it is worth noting, as Jeremy Lin consumed all the buzz in the sport, that the traveling-circus Miami Heat not only went on the road quietly and demolished everything in their path but also looked a lot like what Miller imagined back when he was dreaming.