Miami Heat center Hassan Whiteside is used to being slept on, so he was quite surprised to learn he had been named Eastern Conference Player of the Week.
Whiteside, who took home the honors after averaging 20.0 points, 13.7 rebounds, and 2.7 blocks per game in the past week, had this great reaction to the news of his achievement, per Manny Navarro of the Miami Herald.
Hassan Whiteside on his reaction to winning Eastern Conference Player of the Week: "I won something?"
— Manny Navarro (@Manny_Navarro) March 21, 2017
Of course, the 27-year-old Whiteside does have a history of being overlooked. Despite this being his third consecutive season of stellar play at the fairly thin center position, Whiteside still has yet to be named to an All-Star Team or an All-NBA Team. He earned the first All-Defensive Team nod of his career last season after leading the league with 3.7 blocks per game and was rewarded by the Heat this past offseason with a four-year max contract. But Whiteside is still rarely mentioned as one of the NBA’s elite big men and isn’t given nearly enough credit for Miami’s turnaround this season in spite of his career-high averages in points (16.7) and rebounds per game (14.2, tops in the league).
With the Heat now firmly in the hunt for the 7-8 seeds in the East, they’ll need that chip on Whiteside’s shoulder (which we’ve already seen at other times this year) to be out in full force for the final 12 games of the regular season.
