Among the questions we’ve heard from basketball people this summer: How could Heat president Pat Riley — who values the flexibility needed to pounce on opportunities to acquire a star — put himself in this position, with pretty good, but not elite, players clogging his cap until 2020?
“I always felt Miami’s strength was finding those diamonds in the rough, developing them, and when it comes time to paying them, let somebody else pay them and then we’ll go find the next guy,” ESPN analyst and former Suns scouting coordinator Amin Elhassan told me as he watched summer league games in Las Vegas last month.