There are times in a game when the ball needs to be in a particular player’s hands.
Perhaps you know the other team will foul to stop the clock and regain possession, and you need your best free throw shooter in position to handle the ball and get sent to the line. Or maybe the defense is so tight, the need for a score so pressing, you want the ball controlled by the player best able to create his own shot or simply best able to exploit a particular defensive weakness.
Then there are occasions when you want to punish a zone, or land a quick, momentum-changing punch.