Living large

Heat’s Hassan Whiteside hits the really big time.

MIAMI — Hassan Whiteside is getting a fish tank. “A big one,” he says. For a few fish? “Bigger,” he says. This is fitting, because that word — bigger — fits everything around the Heat center on the edge of the NBA season. Bigger money. Bigger role. Bigger demands. Bigger expectations. Bigger spotlight. Bigger questions. Bigger fish tank. “It’s 1,500 gallons — a fish mansion,” he says, smiling and repeating that idea because it has a good sound to it. “Yeah, a fish mansion.”

The tank will go in the new kitchen with the new chef in his new Miami Beach home. It’s arriving in a very Whiteside-ian way, too. He contacted the Animal Planet show “Tanked” that builds and installs fish tanks for celebrities and then airs it all in an episode. “I’m going to Snapshot it out,” he says. Does that provide a glimpse into Whiteside’s spectacular summer? The one that, “made everything better for me.” The one he says, “changed my life — but didn’t change me.”

He’s still 7 feet of fun, as this fish-tank story says. But he admits that the four-year, $98 million contract and all it afforded is “a little surreal for me still.”

You can appreciate why: He was raised by a single mother who stitched four jobs together to support her family. He became

a basketball vagabond who played in the minor leagues of three continents before the Heat gave him a spot.

Now he has everything he dreamed: The contract, a place to call home and a franchise that, for the first time in his career, said they want him.

“That was important,” he said.

The Heat need him, too. Dwyane Wade is gone. Chris Bosh is gone. There’s some young talent like Justise Winslow, Josh Richardson and Tyler Johnson. There are veterans like Goran Dragic and Dion Waiters.

Then there’s a sometimes-dynamic force like Whiteside, the centerpiece that no one was quite sure the Heat would trust to pay. He didn’t start the last half of last season, remember. He was outplayed by Toronto center Jonas Valanciunas in the playoffs.

He also was discounted in a preseason poll of NBA general managers put out by NBA.com. Six players were mentioned as the league’s top center, led by the Los Angeles Clippers’ DeAndre Jordan. No Whiteside.

This is the exact slight that would boil inside Whiteside in past years. Now, he shrugs and says it’s about winning. Just that. And maybe that’s a step toward the matured game the Heat need.

Heat coach Erik Spoelstra likes the fun side of Whiteside, noting, “in the last few pre-practices he’s sprinted up into the gym and run the full court just to let everyone know he’s here.”

Fun is good. Fun is nice. But the words Spoelstra said when informing Whiteside that, after 30 games off the bench, he was starting again last April still resonate:

“Be great, don’t settle,” Spoelstra said then.

Now, Spoelstra says, “I think he’s improved from where he was last year. Now it’s a matter of doing that when games count and impacting winning. That’s the most important thing. He understands that.”

How does that translate on any night? Dragic says Whiteside needs to get two feet in the paint by the basket to get the ball passed in. That’s tough work in the NBA. It requires a certain mindset of banging bodies.

Whiteside has shown flashes of greatness. That’s why the Heat gave him the big contract. But the topics around him starting Wednesday night in Orlando are more central to this Heat season than last one: Can he lift this team? Will he be The Man? Is he worth the money?

“I know what I’ve got to do,” Whiteside says.

He’s had some fun this off-season, hence thefish tank. But starting Wednesday he goes in the fish bowl himself. And everyone will be watching to see what how a man handles being given everything he wanted.

Dave Hyde