Player exit review: Hassan Whiteside continues to grow
By Cory Sanning
Interesting Stat: 14.1
It couldn’t be more obvious, right?
While this is something I did not have to dig deep for (and I tried, trust me), there is no other statistic that stood out to me more than Whiteside’s rebounding this year.
Since being called up from the D-League in late 2014, Whiteside has always had a knack for shining glass. He’s averaged double-digit boards in every season with the Heat and that trend definitely is not slowing down.
In 77 games played, Whiteside recorded double-digit rebounds in 66 of them, and he had more 20-rebound games than any big man this season, with seven under his belt.
Not only that, he became the first player in franchise history to grab 1,000 or more rebounds in a single season, ending with 1,088 total.
Whiteside also had one of the higher defensive rebounding percentages in the entire league at 35.3 percent.
It’d be easy to dig deep into the analytics of the game to find a statistic that seems rare and unique, but nobody in the NBA rebounded the ball better than Whiteside did this season, and he readily admits it.
"“Leading the league in anything is tough,” he said, via the Palm Beach Post. “Last year it was blocks. This year, it’s rebounding. Just having two big things that you want your center to do is pretty special.”"