Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Intervention needed
“By the time we got to the playoffs, I don’t think he was ready,” Riley said. “He wasn’t ready. He wasn’t in great shape. He wasn’t fully conditioned for a playoff battle mentally. He and we got our heads handed to us.
“The disconnect between he and Spo, that’s going to take a discussion between them and it’s going to take thought on the part of Coach and also Hassan. How will Hassan transform his thinking — 99 percent of it — to get the kind of improvement that Spo wants so he can be effective?
“How can Spo transform his thinking when it comes to offense and defense or minutes or whatever? However he uses him, that’s what you do. We go through this almost every year with players. There’s always a disagreement, a change in philosophy or whatever it is.”
Riley said the game is changing and that it is incumbent on Whiteside to adjust.
“I have the same problem with Hassan,” he said of Spoelstra’s attempts to make Whiteside fit in what has grown into a perimeter-oriented league. “That problem is that he’s going to have to do something to change because he’s a helluva player. You’ve got [Steven] Adams. You’ve got [Clint] Capela. You got [Jonas] Valanciunas. You got DeAndre Jordan. You’ve got [Andre] Drummond. You’ve got Hassan. You’ve got these quintessential sort of centers that are being forced to play a certain game because the game has changed and there’s only one or two or three teams that can play that game, because three or four transformative players that can make that game effective. So, how do we make him effective?
“That’s what it is. How does he make himself effective? To do the things he needs to do -- defend, rebound, shot blocking, all of those things that he did that we fell in love with the first year, second year? He had a bad year this year. He’s got to come back strong next year. I’m going to try to help him as much as I can. I’m going to try to help the both of them so we can keep him on the court 30 minutes a game. But he’s got to help himself.”
The call with playing time, Riley said, remains solely with Spoelstra.
“I don’t get involved with Erik in how he wants to play his guys or how he rotates the players,” Riley said. “We have discussions, philosophical discussions about a lot of things.
“So I don’t have any real disagreement with how Spo used him. I would have taken him out of the game, too, you know, the way he was performing in some of those games.”