Miami Heat: 3 Potential Reasons Hassan Whiteside Has Yet To Find A Deal

Former Miami Heat big man, Hassan Whiteside, isn’t on a team right now. The way he moves and plays the game has a bit to do with it as well.

He’s A Plodder

The Miami Heat needed a guy like Hassan Whiteside last season during the NBA Finals. They absolutely struggled with protecting the rim, the paint, and in dealing with the size of the Lakers, period.

They were fully aware of that deficiency when they shipped him off though. The Blazers still found a role for him with their guy, Jusuf Nurkic, out.

Let’s stick there though. Nurk is of the new breed of big men.

Basically, over the last few years, we have tried to push the narrative that the league is totally going away from big men, but that isn’t exactly true anymore. The league is going away from a certain type of big man.

The lumbering, plodding, Hassan Whiteside-Roy Hibbert types that don’t impact the game in a myriad of areas are the bigs that the league is shifting away from and phasing out. The Jusuf Nurkic, Bam Adebayo, Nikola Jokic types are all the vogue though.

They are all 7 feet tall or near that, so to say it’s going away from bigs period, is just false. Again, they are going away from the not so fleet of foot, less mobile, 7-foot guys who only stand in or near the paint.

That’s the second reason why he has probably yet to sign a deal. That isn’t saying that he won’t, but that’s why he’s had to wait so long.

This next one is a real doozy though.