MIAMI – Standing outside their posh hotel in a tony suburb, with waterfalls sparkling in the Sunday afternoon sunshine and a breeze rustling palm trees, the Chicago Bulls couldn’t have looked more relaxed.

A few miles up the road, the Miami Heat were a team with plenty on their collective minds.

Sure, the Heat escaped Game 1 of the Eastern Conference first-round series with an 111-106 victory over the Bulls on Saturday night, with Dwyane Wade and Shaquille O’Neal combining for 57 points, 20 rebounds, 12 assists and seven blocked shots.

But with Game 2 set for Monday, it’s the Heat – not the trailing Bulls – facing a litany of questions.

Will the cramps that sent Wade hobbling painfully away with 8.6 seconds left still be an issue? Will Udonis Haslem, ejected Saturday for throwing his mouthpiece toward referee Joey Crawford, be suspended by the NBA? And if so, is Alonzo Mourning healthy enough to help what would be a depleted front line?

No one could answer any of those questions on Sunday with any certainty.

“This is about an experienced, savvy, talented team which I believe we have taking advantage of the opportunities out there,” Heat coach Pat Riley said. “But one thing they cannot neglect is just how hard (Chicago) is going to play and the kind of effort they’re going to have to make to stay with them.”

The teams huddled for video sessions on Sunday, and while some adjustments are certainly going to be made on both sides, neither club is expected to deviate greatly from the plans taken into Game 1.

“I don’t know what they thought before the series started,” said Bulls guard Ben Gordon, who had a game-high 35 points on Saturday – but made his last field goal with 9:55 left. “Now they definitely have to know we’re not going to back down.”

Miami’s main mission will be minimizing Chicago’s open looks from the perimeter; the Bulls’ drive-and-kick game helped them shoot 13-for-26 from 3-point range on Saturday, and that kind of long-range effectiveness opened paths for the Bulls to attack the rim as well.

And the Bulls, well, they’ll focus on Wade and O’Neal again, of course.

Wade was at the Heat facility around 9 a.m. Sunday, getting a massage on his cramp-sore calf and drinking plenty of Gatorade and water. Sadly for Chicago, there’s no similar elixir they can use to have anybody match up better against the 7-foot-1, 319-pound O’Neal – who started 9-for-10 and finished 11-for-16 from the floor.

“Dominance, man. I think this is the best he’s played in a long time,” Wade said. “Last night was one of his better games in a while, so it’s good to see him back into the form of being Shaquille.”

O’Neal also had 16 rebounds, and feasted on seeing large amounts of one-on-one coverage.

“It’s exhausting. You only have to guard a person like him one time, and that’s when we face them,” Bulls center Tyson Chandler said. “It takes a lot of energy away, but you’ve got to keep on pounding at it and try to get him tired before you do.”

That approach wasn’t totally in vain.

It worked on Wade, at least until the latter minutes.

Wade had 14 of his 30 points in the final quarter on Saturday, including six straight that dug Miami out of its only deficit of the night and put the Heat ahead to stay.

“As a team, I think we did a pretty good job,” Bulls guard Kirk Hinrich said. “We just have to do a little bit better.”

Take away O’Neal’s 11-for-16 night, and the Bulls held the rest of Miami to 42.6 percent shooting – exactly what Chicago allowed during the regular-season, when it led the NBA in field-goal percentage defense.

“But you can’t take away Shaq’s 11-for-16,” Bulls coach Scott Skiles said, somewhat glumly.

It’s not really Chicago’s style to double-team incessantly, so it’s possible that the Bulls could resort to anything – including the Hack-a-Shaq, where teams send Miami’s notoriously poor free-throw shooter to the line at every opportunity.

Skiles didn’t rule any approach out, saying “everything’s on the table right now.”

“Fouling him and putting him on the line makes him theoretically shoot less field goals and puts him on the line, but it also puts their team in the penalty earlier every quarter,” Skiles said. “And then other guys are going to the line. … So if we’re just fouling Shaq sort of indiscriminately, it can be a long night.”