You always go to your superstar and the Miami Heat didn’t on Saturday

The Miami Heat are coming off one of their worst defeats of the season. Now, it’s hard to say that, considering they also were defeated by an undermanned Memphis squad and a bottom-dwelling Detroit Pistons squad within seven days of said defeat as well.

However and nonetheless, they would come to try and surpass the disappointment of those defeats on Saturday. In a hotly contested matchup against another of the league’s bottom teams, the San Antonio Spurs, the Miami Heat allowed them to hang around all evening.

Though the Miami Heat clearly looked like the better team for most of the game, not indicative of the score but indicative of the team capable of imposing themselves at will or the most, they wouldn’t be so by much.

This was indicated in the fact that they could never really get separation from the feisty young Spurs group. In the end, the Miami Heat had an excellent trio of defensive sequences to get the ball back with about 10 seconds left, forcing two timeouts and a five seconds call on the inbounds.

The Miami Heat took another nasty defeat Saturday and by their own faults. You always go to your superstar in the final moments, but they didn’t.

And this is where things begin to get really sticky. With an opportunity to tie the ball game or win it—the Miami Heat chose the latter.

Getting two looks from Tyler Herro and then Caleb Martin, the Miami Heat would come up unsuccessful in their attempts, thus losing the game. Here’s the issue with that and it’s simple.

In the biggest moments and in the NBA especially, where the best players really do impact how much a team wins or loses, you always go to your best player there. Why wasn’t Jimmy Butler the one with the ball?

The Boston Celtics will always go to Jayson Tatum. The Milwaukee Bucks will always include Giannis Antetokounmpo.

LeBron James will always be involved on his teams on the final possessions—and so on and so forth. Whether it be to take the shot—or to create for someone else, your best player must be the one making the choices there and on Saturday, Jimmy Butler was not put in an optimal position to do so.

Point blank period, he has to be the guy taking the shot or trying to get to his shot but creating for someone else if he can’t one. He was the screener in the core action Saturday night, never touching the ball, and that can never happen.