Hassan Whiteside Wants You to Keep Attacking Him

MIAMI — By virtue of his 7’0″, 265-pound frame, none of Hassan Whiteside’s shirts look normal. Still, this particular piece of clothing seemed funny for more than just its funhouse mirror-style appearance.

The gray Nike shirt read “Just Buckets” across the chest. It was tailor-made for a chucker. Yet buckets are what the $98 million man keeps opponents from ever finding.

“There are two different kinds of coaches and teams,” Whiteside explained after an NBA season-high seven-block performance against the Milwaukee Bucks last Thursday. “There are coaches that say, ‘Hassan Whiteside is down there, don’t attack them.’ Then, there are coaches and teams that are like, ‘Hassan Whiteside is down there, let’s attack.’

“God bless those teams. Long live those teams.”

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Blocks are the best place to start a Whiteside discussion, because they’ve quickly become his trademark contribution (which he’ll tell you himself).

Since the Miami Heat grabbed him out of thin air in November 2014, he has tallied a league-best 427 blocks. And that’s not the most amazing part.

Over that same stretch, he’s 138th in minutes played. If he walked away right now, he’d leave tied for the NBA’s third-highest career blocks per 36 minute average (4.2, minimum 1,000 minutes played).

“He is the best shot-blocker in our league,” Chicago Bulls coach Fred Hoiberg said before Whiteside had 20 points, 20 rebounds and three blocks against them. “He is a monster.”

Whiteside isn’t the current blocks leader—his 2.7 per game trail only Anthony Davis’ 3.0—but he is on pace to secure the first rebounding crown of his career. His 15.9-per-game average not only leads the league, but it’s also the highest recorded by a qualified player since Hall of Famer Dennis Rodman snagged 16.1 in 1996-97.

During Miami’s 101-94 loss to the Philadelphia 76ers Monday, Whiteside blitzed the highly touted up-and-coming tandem of Joel Embiid and Jahlil Okafor for a career-high 32 points on 13-of-19 shooting.

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Miami’s massive man in the middle is also the NBA’s high man with 12 double-doubles, its only player with double-digit rebounds in every contest and its most effective rim protector among high-volume bigs (36.9 percent shooting allowed inside).

Is Whiteside the NBA’s most productive center?

It’s a subjective stance and far from a universal opinion—NBA general managers didn’t mention him in the best center voting on their annual survey—but the stat sheet says there’s an argument to be made. He’s not only one of eight centers averaging at least 25 minutes with a player efficiency rating of 17-plus, but he also ranks at or near the top of multiple stat categories within the group.

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Numbers alone won’t quell Whiteside’s critics, who have longed to see more consistency and a better mental approach from the springy 7-footer. But his rapid rise goes well beyond the box score.

For a Heat team reeling from the losses of LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh in a two-year span, the formerly hot-headed Whiteside is becoming a leader.

“I think he’s doing a really good job of trying to step into that role and be more vocal, which I think was what everybody was kind of criticizing him for was sometimes getting into his little moods,” Tyler Johnson told Bleacher Report. 

“But I think he’s done a really good job of being receptive to other guys talking to him. He doesn’t just brush off information, he actually looks like he’s trying to take it in and apply it.”

That’s an important step, especially as it comes with Whiteside’s …

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