MIAMI —  At 32, Norman Powell recognized he had to find a way to bridge the age gap with 21-year-old Heat teammate Kel’el Ware.

So he decided to do the only logical thing in an attempt to push the right buttons was quite literally find the right button to push.

The upshot was a more active, aggressive Ware in Monday night’s 115-113 bounce-back victory over the New York Knicks at Kaseya Center.

“I always tell him there’s a meter, think of it as like 2K back in the day,” Powell said of the NBA video game that features a player-boost element if peak efficiency is realized. “There should be a meter, a takeover meter in the game. And I told him the bottom is G League and the top is Generational, and I want him to be in that Generational every single game, because that’s the talent that he has.”

While perhaps not Generational in Monday night’s victory, the second-year 7-footer was far closer to what coach Erik Spoelstra has been seeking, a definitive spike from play that was lacking in Friday night’s loss to the Knicks at Madison Square Garden.

“Kel’el was very impactful, those last several minutes. That’s certainly growth,” Spoelstra said.

In closing with 16 points, 14 rebounds and three blocked shots, Ware recorded his fourth consecutive double-double, now with double-digit rebounds in six of his last seven games.

The difference Monday was a glimpse into a motivated Ware, able to draw upon the disappointment of Friday’s failure.

Monday’s mission?

“Get the ball,” he told the entire arena during his walk-off interview following Monday night’s victory. “I think that was what was going through everybody’s head, ‘Get the ball. Get the game over with.’

“I couldn’t let what happened last game happen this game.”

So, instead, there was a decisive late blocked shot that was confirmed by replay as not being the goaltend that initially was called.

And there was force. Fierce force.

“I mean you just felt the multiple efforts,” Spoelstra said, with the Heat shifting their attention to Wednesday night’s visit by the Golden State Warriors. “Even the block that was called a goaltend, it was a great effort on his part. The rebounding was very intentional. And the multiple efforts.”

A sequence with 4:05 to play illustrated to Spoelstra what a motivated Ware could be.

“I thought that drive that he had with four minutes to go, was kind of a loose ball, caught on the baseline, it could have been one of those flip shots,” Spoelstra said. “But he wanted to make sure that this thing was going to the rim and got the and-one.

“That showed me there’s growth in time-score-context swing moments, ‘Hey, let’s just not get a shot that you might think in the first three minutes of the game.’ ”

The mindset was there, instead of some of the mindlessness that had grown infuriating.

“And it’s not always going to be perfect,” Powell said. “It’s not always going to be perfect where he’s hitting every shot. But those hustle plays, those energy plays, those second and third opportunities, hustling for the ball, offensive rebounds and things like that is what we need. We feed off that and we saw that.

“And I think he’s doing a good job. There’s going to be ups and downs. But as long as he stays mentally tough and fights through the adversity, it’s going to be good, because we need him.”

When the fight is there, Spoelstra said Ware is a different player, this time taking on the challenges of both helping contain Karl-Anthony Towns and backstopping the defense.

“I’m not talking about necessarily getting stops,” Spoelstra said of Ware’s defensive turns against Towns, who was down from Friday night’s 39 points to 22 Monday. “It’s just you have to negotiate through a lot of different things — pick-and-roll basketball, flares, a guy who knows how to draw fouls, is crafty. And then when he’s not on him, like, hey, you got to control the paint and make sure you’re protecting the rim for us. There’s a lot of different kind of roles that he had to do throughout the course of the game.”