Time and place
For Whiteside, time an enemy but he says he’s in a better place.
MIAMI — Two games into this best-of-seven NBA playoff series and it already feels like a heavyweight fight. The only thing that is missing are the . . . heavyweights.
One has been missing from the outset, Philadelphia 76ers center Joel Embiid still awaiting clearance to return from the fractured orbital bone near his left eye sustained in a March 28 game against the New York Knicks.
The other has been present in name only, lethargic play limiting Miami Heat center Hassan Whiteside to 12 minutes, 25 seconds in his team’s 130-103 Game 1 loss and then foul trouble reducing his night to 15:10 in Monday’s 113-103 victory.
And yet, as Embiid broods on about what he perceives as an overly cautious approach by the 76ers, putting coach Brett Brown on the defensive, Whiteside said he has regained his footing and confidence thanks to encouragement from coach Erik Spoelstra.
“Coach Spo was, ‘You’re playing amazing,’” Whiteside said of interaction on the bench far less contentious Monday than in SatInstagram
urday’s series opener, “and that’s the only personal opinion I really care about, if my coaching staff is telling me I’m playing amazing.”
Because Whiteside played big when needed, it led to a 180-degree change by the 76ers. After going small, without a true center for the second half of Game 1, Philadelphia in Game 2 turned back to center Amir Johnson at the start of Monday’s second half.
To Spoelstra, even with Whiteside’s limited minutes, it was validation of Whiteside’s power play.
“Without those 15 minutes,” Spoelstra said, “it might have been totally different. Those were much needed. He got that fourth foul and I had the intention to put him back in the fourth. We just didn’t get around to it when they made their run. They went even smaller, but we can definitely build on that.”
Whiteside acknowledged that he felt he let his team down in the opener, when he closed with two points, six rebounds and two blocked shots in barely playing a quarter of the game. And yet by merely sitting in a winning locker room, he felt validated Monday.
“I was tough on myself,” he said of the intervening period after Saturday’s loss. “I didn’t really sleep that much. I was tough on myself. I really wanted to come out and make a bigger impact like I did last playoffs [in 2016]. But it didn’t happen. At the end of the day, as long as we got the win, I can sleep well.”
He said despite outside perspectives, he has bought into the all-for-one approach, gladly giving way to Dwyane Wade’s 28-point Game 2 breakthrough.
“D-Wade came up to me after the game and was like, ‘It’s not going to be everybody’s night. It’s going to be a different person every night,’” Whiteside said. “We were just playing through D-Wade. And Game 3, who knows?”
Amid the first of twoday breaks in the series, Whiteside said he isn’t sure what comes next, with Brown unlikely to reveal the 76ers’ Embiid intentions until far closer to Thursday’s 7 p.m. tip for Game 3 at AmericanAirlines Arena.
But he said if he again has to guard 76ers outsideshooting power forward Dario Saric and then be defended by Philadelphia power forward Ersan Ilyasova, so be it.
“Those guys were running me through all kinds of screens, getting me moving,” Whiteside said, with his belief that his agility should have allowed him to play through Game 1. “They wanted to keep me out of the paint as much as possible. And I understand that, when you’ve got such a big-time shot blocker.”
And when on the bench, this time no brooding, just rooting.
“I’m fine,” he said. “Of course you want to be out there more. Of course, I would like to play 30-plus minutes, but I was in foul trouble and I understood why Coach couldn’t put me out there.
“The guys played great and Coach just left them guys out there. Like I said, it’s a long series. It’s going to be a different guy each game. Maybe it’s me next game, maybe it’s not. I don’t really care about all that. I just want to get the win.”