Miami Heat: How Hassan Whiteside, Bam Adebayo are causing a revolution
The Miami Heat, with Hassan Whiteside and Bam Adebayo at their disposal, are primed to take advantage of the NBA’s forthcoming center revolution.
The Revolution
Miami Heat big man Hassan Whiteside’s full court drive and finish over the top of the Toronto Raptors’ defense on Wednesday night, was revolutionary.
Revolutionary in the sense that it quite literally involved a revolution, or a spin, around the Raptor duo of Fred VanVleet and Serge Ibaka.
But it was also revolutionary considering the current positional thermometer in the NBA. Long thought to be a dead position, center is re-emerging as a must-have role for teams across the league.
From the Heat to the Portland Trail Blazers, teams are turning to increasingly position-less models of play.
Anthony Davis is the lone center in the top-20 minutes played per game—ironically, he’s leading the league with 36.9 per contest, though his lone star role on the New Orleans Pelicans sees him picking up slack in more ways than one—and only Marc Gasol joins him when that list is expanded to the top-30.
Reliance on speed and shooting accuracy defines the NBA’s current trajectory, and those are two things centers typically don’t have. Passing the 7-foot and 240-pound threshold usually hampers both of those departments, though there are a handful of counter-cases.
Lauri Markkanen and Kristaps Porzingis present potential arguments, but their injury history piles on another problem localized to 7-foot tall behemoths.
Whiteside’s emphatic slam, then, bucked the idea that speed and shooting are the most valued qualities of the day. He passed up four options in favor of charging straight at VanVleet and Ibaka, neither of whom had an answer to impede his progress.
Such a play is not the preferred choice after every successful Whiteside rebound. You can gauge the entire arena’s shock as the fans and Miami’s bench don’t even begin to react until the ball is well through the rim.
But that Whiteside had the confidence to do so, is telling of a dramatic shift in the NBA and its positional priorities.