Who deserves blame in Miami Heat failing to trade for Damian Lillard?

Donovan Mitchell, Kevin Durant, Bradley Beal and now Lillard. Is it time for Riley and the Heat to give up the star chase?

Noah: It is never time to give up chasing stars! With Lillard, the personification of loyalty in the NBA, requesting a trade, several other stars might follow suit. We could see a huge wave of star trades coming soon. The Heat are bound to strike gold on one of them.

Alex: While it is tough to see Miami not land a star recently, especially after being linked to Beal and Lillard, Miami should always try and go for stars. It’s something they’ve done for years. But the main question is, which star will they feel is the right one to exhaust all options and cash in all their chips?

Azam: They should never give up on acquiring stars, but they need to do some serious soul-searching and try to identify why they’ve come up empty so often. Whatever their current approach has been between analyzing the value of their assets as well as not demonstrating sufficient urgency in getting the piece they want to acquire, the calibration has gone off the wires since they acquired Jimmy Butler. The Butler-Bam Adebayo core is so ready-made for a lead-scoring guard to be the perfect third piece to a championship contender, but the inability to make it happen has mystified me to no end.

Stephanie: Miami has some thinking to do. They need to reflect on their decisions and why deals have fallen through. They should not give up on looking for superstars — as they have with Mitchell, Beal, Durant and Lillard — but they need to have a different approach now that they have failed to get the job done multiple times.