Another win arrives with Hassan on bench
MIAMI — Sunday brought the mystery of Hassan Whiteside in two quotes. They came after the Heat beat Milwaukee on Sunday, pulled within a game of Cleveland for third in the East, ran their win streak to seven games and basically led the league in good news.
What do those sevenstraight wins mean?
“Nothing,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said.
What, you expected rose petals?
“It doesn’t mean anything,” Spoelstra said. “You have to start from scratch every game. What we’ve been committed to is the process of getting better. … But it doesn’t guarantee anything. If anything, you start reading anything into [seven consecutive wins], it softens you.”
Those aren’t the two quotes on Whiteside, by the way. They’re just Spoelstra being Spoelstra. They help explain how year after year, team after team, situation after situation, expectation after expectation, Spoelstra gets the best out of a roster. The very best.
That’s all a good coach can do, of course. With The Big Three, he’ll help it to two titles. With good-not-great talent, he’ll get to Game 7 of the second round, as in 2016. With a
new roster of uncertain players, he’ll go 30-11 to end last season.
That’s the big picture, the one this team is still working on. The small picture came Sunday when he snapped at players for not getting a loose ball in the first quarter and James Johnson dove for one in the fourth quarter with the Heat leading by double digits.
See how good coaching works? How players typically respond to it?
Which leads to Whiteside. He’s the team’s best talent and his role remains a curiosity. He’s in. He’s out. He starts. He doesn’t finish. In Sunday’s third quarter, Whiteside had a team-high four rebounds and nine points, made all four of his shots and led the Heat jump from a two-point deficit at half to a 12-point lead they would never gave up.
“I told him when he came out, ‘Take a snapshot of what you look like right now — totally gasping for air, out of breath,’ ” Spoelstra said. “What that picture is, is of a vision of a competitor who left it all out there.
He made a big-time effort on both ends of the court.
“Even those offensive tips where we didn’t score, he was burning calories and expending a lot of energy. Those extra, multiple efforts are inspiring. I really believe those inspire the players coming in the game.
“He was also protecting the paint for us as well. This is a dynamic attacking team. When he’s locked in, he can be elite at what he does. We just have to build on that. The next challenge is to be consistent. I love what he did in the third quarter.”
It was all there in that quote — a good coach’s praise, his appreciation for hard work and an open demand to do that every game. There wasn’t any more of it on Sunday. Whiteside sat the entire fourth quarter.
That led to the second quote on Whiteside:
“I was ready to put him back in,” Spoelstra said. “Nothing to read into (him not playing in the fourth quarter). That group was rolling, I wanted to see if they could finish out the game.”
Yet that’s the mystery. Every other starter played in Sunday’s fourth quarter. Whiteside is this team’s best
talent when he’s on and biggest contract even if he doesn’t play. And Spoelstra obviously wants Whiteside to build better habits consistently before he’s going to regularly reward him with minutes.
Just as he did last year. And the year before. And you have to ask: If Spoelstra isn’t getting through to Whiteside by now, will he ever? And do the Heat see Whiteside as a chip to trade, if they’re not going to build with him?
Whiteside downplayed his big third quarter, praising Johnson finding him with passes. As for not playing in the fourth quarter, it’s almost like he accepted his odd role of not finishing games.
“When those guys are playing great, I don’t come in,” he said. “Those guys were playing great.”
It’s all a mystery. Or maybe it’s just a great coach being true to his standards. Maybe it’s that simple. Whiteside is hearing Spoelstra, to be sure. Asked about the seven-game win streak, Whiteside said, “What win streak?”