JUST NOW: at last Damian Lillard, a much bigger fish, had finally asked the Heat to trade him.

The Miami Heat are perilously close to collapse following a poor and uneven start to the regular season.

Few people, in my opinion, truly get how devastating it was for the Miami Heat to lose out on Damian Lillard.

For the past few offseasons, the message from the Heat’s front office to its fans is that it was eventually going to land another superstar opposite of Jimmy Butler. And that all they needed was for a disgruntled star to choose Miami. And at the beginning of this summer, it appeared that the Heat’s time was finally here.

After making the NBA Finals twice in the last four years, it appeared as if the Heat was finally going to land their final piece of a possible championship puzzle. The stage was set for Miami to be one of the bigger winners of the offseason. And when the Heat essentially passed up on the opportunity to trade for Beal, hope was lost.

Just a couple of weeks later, that decision made sense. Damian Lillard, a much bigger fish, had finally demanded a trade – and only to the Heat. The stars were finally aligning for Miami. This was their offseason. This was the big splash that the front office had been alluding to.

However, as history now knows, the Heat didn’t land Lillard. To add injury to insult, he was traded to one of the Heat’s rivals.