Four times this season, the Miami HEAT have found themselves up or down five points with less than five minutes to play. And all four times, the HEAT have been unable to close things out in regulation – their sole victory coming in an overtime affair with the Sacramento Kings.

In all three losses, including Thursday night to the Chicago Bulls, they were on the cusp. In all three losses, they were just a couple of good possessions away from taking control. Which shouldn’t be too much of a surprise. You take away veteran scorers from a young, inexperienced nucleus and those young players will likely endure their fair share of growing pains. Few young teams throughout history are immune to such a trajectory.

In all three losses, of their five this season, the HEAT’s youth may not have prevailed, but they encouraged.

“I told our guys in the locker room we’re closer than it looks, than what our schedule is telling us that it looks like,” Erik Spoelstra said. “We just have to continue plugging away to get over the hump. Our guys are really competing, laying it out on the line.”

While some may feel frustration watching Miami struggle to find points on the night their former scoring fountain, Dwyane Wade, returned to town – to a very positive reception – with his new team and their starting point-guard, Goran Dragic, went down with a sprained ankle, if you look at it as less of an expectation for success and more as an opportunity, the positives aren’t tough to find.

We’ve already discussed how Miami’s late-game execution will be far less about being able to rely on a That Guy, like Chicago did on Jimmy Butler, and more about closing by committee, so let’s narrow in on a specific player in this one: Justise Winslow.

In a pre-game interview with TNT, Pat Riley addressed what it is he thinks Winslow needs as part of the developmental process.

“He’s 20. Just experience. More and more experience. I hate to say this, he needs more and more failure,” Riley said.

Strange though that may be to read, it’s hugely important. Failure is a crucial part of the learning process for anyone. Just as you stumble while you’re learning to walk, professional basketball players rarely show up on the scene doing everything right. They fail, over and over, with some hitting the same ceiling for years until they finally break through to a new level. Those who find success are able to review their own shortcomings and change.

Winslow addressed those shortcomings during the offseason. He has spoken regularly of the need to improve his jump shot, that he knows teams will lay off him defensively until he earns their respect. But knowing what you need to fix does not mean fixing overnight. Teaching your body new muscle memory and repeating those motions with consistency under the watchful eye of millions is far from an exact process.

He knew this.

“It’s just understanding that you want to push your limits and become the best player you can be as fast as you can, but you have to understand it’s a process and you’re going to mess up,” Winslow said during training camp. “There’s going to be nights when you shoot 2-for-11 or whatever, but you have to be able to mentally block everything out.”

It’s easy being patient during the offseason, when patience is forced upon us all. But then the season starts and things start moving so fast, our timelines creep up without anyone realizing it. Suddenly, a tough shooting night on the road for a 20-year old experiencing a huge spike in shot attempts becomes a referendum on his entire future.

Then he shows up a few days later, in a nationally televised game, and goes right at his former Hall of Fame teammate with, as they say, no chill. Then, he gets back to the form he worked on all summer and hits three shots from downtown.

“Everyone is examining and micro-managing his three-point shot, but this kid is a player,” Riley said. “His offensive game is going to come when people shut up about it. They can say to me, ‘You know what, it ain’t going to happen.’ He’s going to become a scorer. I know a lot of guys in this league, in the 50 years I’ve been around, that might have not been stickers but they were 20-points-a-game guys. And they helped you win. I’m not concerned about Justise. We have a winner there.”

Even when the jumper isn’t falling or he’s being swarmed in the paint, Winslow has regularly done so many things right even when the team falls short. Dragic is one of the most indispensable players on Miami this season because of his ability to create scoring opportunities, so when he went down Thursday it seemed to leave the HEAT adrift without an anchor.

But there was Winslow, playing every minute of that neck-and-neck quarter with both a usage (how many possessions he used to shoot, draw a foul or turn the ball over) and assist (how many team scores he assisted on) rate well over 20 percent. There he was, creating open three-pointers as he’s done consistently all year.

And there he was, in a three-point game with a minute to play, creating his own shot.

In what was a tie game at halftime and through three quarters, the HEAT scored 25 points to Chicago’s 28 in the fourth with Winslow, Tyler Johnson and Josh Richardson leading, driving and attacking throughout. Behind youth, the opportunities were there.

“We had some good looks going down the stretch, we really did,” Spoelstra said. “There was a stretch there, for about three or four minutes, where we had open looks that we just couldn’t capitalize on.

“Even our 4th quarter execution was much better than a couple of the home games earlier. Our guys are plugging away.”

This may sound like someone trumpeting the positives while pushing aside glaring issues, but this is what young teams are all about. A few more shots could have fallen in three of Miami’s losses and nobody would blink twice as the record shifted, but the process would have remained the same. Results in November don’t change season-long projects.

Were this a more veteran team then the discourse would be different, but such are the joys of youth. It’s about the growth on display during a long journey, not the individual stumbles along the way.