He might be known most for his postgame interview after his triple-double against the Chicago Bulls.
Or his wrestling-like tackle of Phoenix Suns center Alex Len.
But his story is much more than catchy one-liners and wrestling moves.
A year ago Hassan Whiteside was released by Al Mouttahed Tripoli, a team from Lebanon, while also spending time in China and the D-League. When this season started, Whiteside was playing at his local YMCA in Charlotte, NC where he mostly worked on his point guard skills. But now Whiteside is the starting center for the Miami Heat and finished the season averaging a double-double (11.8 points per game and 10 rebounds per game). Whiteside also averaged 2.6 blocks per game, while shooting 62.8 percent from the field in only 23.8 minutes per game. Whiteside’s stats per 36 minutes were 17.8 points, 15.2 rebounds, and 3.9 blocks. That has never been done in the history of the NBA by a player that played at least 40 games. Now how can being cut from a team in Lebanon, to having a record-breaking season, not be enough to win the league’s Most Improved Player Award?
One reason people might believe that Whiteside did not win the award is because he did not play in the NBA last year.
That belief was proven incorrect by the NBA who, according to Ira Winderman of the Sun Sentinel, stated, “The only players who are not eligible are rookies and first-year players.” Whiteside is no longer considered rookie eligible and he is not a first-year player since he spent two seasons with the Sacramento Kings from 2010 through 2012. In the 1996-97 season, Isaac Austin, ironically a center for the Heat at that time, won this award after not playing in the NBA for two years. So the fact that Whiteside did not play in the association last year should only add to the reasoning for why he should win the award. How much more improved can a player be than going from struggling overseas to becoming a starter on a team that fell just one game short of the playoffs and recording the NBA’s sixth best Player Efficiency Rating for the season?
Another argument against Hassan Whiteside’s case for Most Improved Player honors might be that he hurt his team by getting ejected twice this year after hitting other teams players while taking out his frustrations.
Immaturity has been a problem throughout Whiteside’s career. In Chad Ford of ESPN.com’s 2010 player analysis of Whiteside (when Whiteside was entering the draft), Ford said:
“Whiteside clearly believes he has the stuff to be great…but my interview with him was eerily similar to the one I had with Tyrus Thomas a few years ago. Thomas tried to convince me he was a perimeter player, complained he wasn’t ranked No. 1 and generally seemed clueless about the rest of the players in the draft. That’s not to say Whiteside isn’t a nice kid. He has a great smile, can carry on a great conversation and clearly has worked hard on his game the past few years. But it’s going to be a big jump to the next level, both emotionally and physically, and from what I saw on Friday (at the 2010 rookie combine), I’m not sure he’s quite ready to make it.”
So from the start of his NBA career immaturity has surely been an issue for Whiteside, and I’m not going to say it won’t continue to be. But there have been signs of Whiteside maturing this year. At the beginning of his playing time with the Heat this season, Whiteside was clearly still showing signs of immaturity saying things such as “I just wanted to get my 2k rating up.” It didn’t stop there as he then had a bad streak of games where he was either picking up technical fouls or flagrant two fouls, which resulted in automatic ejections. When Whiteside wasn’t on the court he would basically sit at the end of the Heat bench and rarely cheer on his teammates. Now that isn’t necessarily a terrible thing, but Whiteside changed that. By the end of the season he was the first person out of his seat on the bench every time one of his Heat teammates scored. When his backup, Chris “Birdman” Andersen scored or blocked a shot, Whiteside was the first person out of his seat flapping his wings.
In terms of the decisions that were getting Whiteside in trouble with technical and flagrant fouls, he was able to limit those at the end of the season. According to Whiteside, whenever he felt like the opposing team was provoking him, he would think about an interaction he had at breakfast one day.
“I had a guy come up to me, at a restaurant, that was eating breakfast and was saying that ‘My seventeen year old son is 6’11 and I’m using your story, I’m using your life as an inspiration for, like, perserverance,’ and I never thought of myself as an example for kids and I really thought it over. Would I really want my kids to see someone (hit another player) and now I really see myself more as a role model and I never thought of myself like that. And I never thought of my story being an inspiration to anybody.”
Now I am not insinuating that this makes Whiteside the perfect role model or anything close to it, but recognizing that there are people looking up to you as a role model is a huge step in the right direction.
The last argument against Whiteside would be that he only played 48 games.
Never has a player won the award while playing less than 50 games. But on the other hand, has there ever been a player that started the season playing at their local gym that finished averaging a double-double? Probably not.
Jimmy Butler had an all-star season. He will probably get votes for All-NBA third team. But he was a good NBA player before this season. Why not give the award to someone that went through the journey like Whiteside has gone through. Someone who showed major signs of perseverance by getting on a team after being on the opposite side of the earth last year, someone who matured as a teammate, and someone who clearly improved on the court as well.