Information obtained from the Miami Beach media regarding the Miami Heat's pursuit of Damian Lillard should be taken with a grain of salt.
Some prominent local reporters have not been objective in their coverage of the league's longest-running offseason story line, repeatedly claiming that no better trade proposal they know of for Lillard has been more successful than the one Miami offered to Portland.
Some even insisted Portland had been dishonest in negotiating the trade - either before the Milwaukee Bucks closed the deal for Lillard before training camp began, or afterward.
Of course, Lillard wasn't the only All-Star guard who changed teams when he was traded to Milwaukee. The Bucks traded Jrue Holiday to the Trail Blazers, who then quickly transferred him to the Boston Celtics in exchange for Robert Williams III, Malcolm Brogdon, a 2024 first-round pick and an unprotected 2029 first-round pick from the Golden State Warriors.
Due to issues between Portland and Miami regarding trade negotiations for Lillard, the two teams reportedly never had real discussions about a deal for Holiday. Still, this communication outage appears to have been more severe than first thought, and a bigger loss for the pioneers.
According to 5 Reasons Sports' Ethan Skolnick, the Heat were originally willing to offer Holiday more assets than they ultimately offered Lillard.
"The Jrue contract is more friendly. He was good on the defensive end, and the Heat didn't think Lillard was." Skolnick wrote in a recent exchange.
Did the Heat intentionally leak questionable information about their failure to trade Damian Lillard?
Whether Miami's potential trade package for Holiday is more extensive than the one they offered Lillard doesn't matter. Given that the reason Miami lost when they reached the 2022 NBA Finals as underdogs was the dynamic and firepower of the offense, Lillard makes more sense as a full-strength trade target than Holiday.
If the team led by Holiday, Jimmy Butler and Ben Adebayor is extremely dominant on the defensive end, their ability to make voluble three-point shots and consistently bend plays that have been present at the highest level of playoff play will not be satisfied.
While the New Deal Holiday will sign once he opts out of his current deal won't be as big as Lillard's, it still severely limits the Heat's prospects for team-building around the big three of Holiday, Butler and Adebayor.
However, the story of more clues about Miami's interest in Lillard being discarded fell a few months after Milwaukee acquired Lillard, and the team still felt compelled to continue mentioning him in unflattering ways.
Skolnick's report was quoted by another local media member as saying that some league decision-makers prefer to have standout rookie Jachet Hawkes on their roster instead of Lillard.
Similarly, just as it became clear that Portland was adamantly opposed to sending Lillard to Miami, rumors began to emerge that the Heat's interest in trading Lillard was overblown. After Lillard was acquired by the Bucks, more reports of the same situation surfaced.
The 11-9 Heat currently have more to worry about than just the public perception of the team's fruitless pursuit of Lillard. Just ask Butler.
"The state we're in is not where we want to be - just an average, not good, not great state," he said after the Miami Heat lost to the Indiana Pacers on Saturday. "Our offense was average. Our defense was average."
Perhaps moving away from mediocrity and shifting the blame to the inability to bring Lillard in is one of the reasons management is so determined to continue referring to him in disgraceful ways. One thing is abundantly clear: The less the Heat look back on a difficult summer, the better chance they have of righting their ship in 2023-24.
