Find points. Any way you can. Just find points.

That’s the mode the Miami HEAT were in down the stretch against one of the league’s perennially premier defenses in the San Antonio Spurs. As they tried to get over the hump against a Spurs team that had held them at arm’s length all evening, the HEAT’s offense found Hassan Whiteside in the post -- just as it had Friday night against the Charlotte Hornets when a stout interior defense stymied pick-and-rolls and drives. The ball found Whiteside in the post.

He catches the ball. He takes a look around the floor, waiting for the entry passer to cut through the paint and give him space to operate. No rush. No hurry. Whiteside takes one dribble, shoulders Dewayne Dedmon to create some space, and rises up for a hook shot before help can arrive. Miami gets numbers on the board.

That’s it. There was no spin move. No up-fakes or double pivots. No power dunk. Nothing particularly worthy of a highlight reel. Just a simple, self-created hook shot (his second of the half) that happened to tie things up down the stretch. It felt, in a sense, revelatory.

Sometimes, when watching the development of promising youth, we want to see those flashes of greatness, the plays which embed themselves as part of their legend, that prove our expectations of great things to come. True greatness doesn’t come in flashes. We can easily forget that much of what composites greatness is the ability to do simple things with great consistency. That’s what now-former Spur Tim Duncan meant to his franchise for the better part of two decades.

When Whiteside went to the ground with a leg cramp just after making that game-tying hook shot – in what was eventually a loss – it was notable to his coach because he had been doing so many of those things, big and small.

“I said [to Whiteside] the reason you got the cramp is that was probably the hardest you’ve played on both ends of the court, in a regular season game,” Erik Spoelstra said. “Now that’s what this basketball team is going to need and it will need 34 to 36 minutes of that every night. Once he understands what that really means to shoulder that kind of responsibility and being a great player . . . he’s getting it. He’s starting to understand it. When that lightbulb goes off, that’s something to see.”

Whiteside has always had post moves. As with many younger players going through the order for the first few times in the league, those moves would manifest themselves more as flashes than in game-to-game efficiency – where Whiteside’s post-up game did not rank particularly highly in his first full season. But often times your team isn’t banking on the chance of something special when you get the ball in an important spot. Sometimes the team just needs a good look. When you’re as big, long and strong as Whiteside is, with a soft touch, that good look can be a run-of-the-mill score.

A hook shot counts the same on the board as an alley-oop, and you can count on being able to get them. With Whiteside’s post-ups nearly doubling from 2.9 to 5.3 per game in the season’s early going, accounting for well over a quarter of his offense, the team is trusting him to get create shots they can count on.

“I feel like I’m more involved in the plays this year,” Whiteside said. “I’m not just a pick-and-roll guy. Coach gave me a couple plays. I’m really glad they’re trusting me with the ball.”

If Whiteside can prove his efficiency in a couple plays – like any player, it takes a decent sample size of games, mathematically, to prove anything – then perhaps his role expands. He gets a couple more plays, then scouting reports expand and teams start doubling more or they start fronting in the post. Then comes adaptation and sorting out how to play the defense against itself. It’s all part of the path to greatness, and nothing safeguards that journey better than a foundation of consistency.

“He’s a dominating player,” Dion Waiters said of Whiteside. “Once he puts his mind to it that he’s going to dominate every night on both ends, it’s going to be hard to stop him.”

The same applies to Justise Winslow, who is experiencing a similar stage on the developmental curve as Whiteside this season (albeit at a younger age) in that he is learning how to produce in a larger role – his usage rate has leapt to 23.1 from 12.4. Like Whiteside, though with fewer raw numbers and dramatic bursts to date, Winslow has his flashes. Whether he’s finishing off an and-one in the paint, executing a euro-step in transition or driving-and-kicking to open shooters many players never see, there have always been hints of a regular, everyday foundational offensive player.

Defenses are testing Miami’s young players. Just as Whiteside won’t see regular double teams until he proves himself in the post, Winslow will have defenders sitting a few feet back and going underneath pick-and-rolls until opponents are threatened by his capacity to take, and make, jumpers with regularity. Which is why it was so encouraging to see Winslow follow up some rough early misses with a number of calm, composed, mid-range jumpers when the defense gave them up.

“The biggest thing is just to stay with it, keep shooting, don’t get down on any one miss or a couple misses in a row,” Winslow said. “That’s what I’m happy about with today. I didn’t hit a single three but I found a way to affect the game. Just trusting the process, staying with it, and my game is going to continue to grow. I’m not satisfied, but I’m happy with the way I kept playing and kept affecting the game.”

Both Winslow and Whiteside had their brushes with the spectacular Sunday night – Winslow with some tough drives and an incredible block of a Dedmon dunk and Whiteside with a block-and-go transition score late and a turnaround-jumper in the lane early. But plays like those have the chance to be game-impacting, swing plays because of all the simple plays in between. A big dunk to tie the game is different than the same play when you’re down a dozen.

It’s when the simple plays like the ones we’ve been discussing become the expectation, the constant, that Whiteside and Winslow will have hit on something special. Expecting that to happen over the course of one offseason and a few games doesn’t adhere to the reality of how most players improve incrementally, but as long as you see more steps forward, as on Sunday, than steps back, then that eventual day-to-day greatness remains an expectation rather than a hope.