Center Hassan Whiteside is looking to prove that last season wan’t a fluke. And while he’ll be suiting up for the Miami Heat during the 2015-16 season, he could be auditioning to join the Charlotte Hornets, a team that might have a glaring hole in the middle in less than a year.
Whiteside was born and raised in Gastonia, N.C., a little more than 20 miles away from the city of Charlotte. It’s a big part of who he was and still is. He played pickup games in a local YMCA waiting for the phone to ring at the start of last season and, even now, he still goes back whenever he has a chance.
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As for the Hornets, they’re at a crossroads this season. CBS Sports’ Matt Moore recently profiled how Nicolas Batum, acquired in an offseason trade with Portland, fits into this season’s plans. But Charlotte is also looking ahead to how current center Al Jefferson — like Whiteside a free agent in 2016 — could be moved.
"So … where does this leave Jefferson, who was the team’s marquee free agency signing two years ago, and helped make them into a playoff team before last year’s fall-off. He turns 31 this season, and picked up his option this summer. He’s an expiring contract. They also drafted (Frank) Kaminsky, and while (Steve) Clifford has been very up-front with the fact that Kaminsky is getting killed in workouts physically by the veterans, they also turned down an offer from Boston of multiple picks for the Tank. You can’t play Kaminsky and Jefferson together for long stretches because your defense will melt like a crayon under a heat lamp. So if they have money committed to (Kemba) Walker and MKG (Michael Kidd-Gilchrist), and want to make sure they retain Batum, and Jefferson’s a free agent…"
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Moore clarifies that he has not heard any rumors indicating that the Hornets front office is looking to move Jefferson. But he does add that the team has committed a lot of money to Walker and Kidd-Gilchrist, possibly making Batum more expendable than previously thought.
The move makes a lot of sense of both the Hornets and Whiteside. Charlotte has run their offense through Jefferson, a low-post monster (when healthy) for years. They have a glut of guards and wings and Batum, while a fine defender, playmaker and shooter, might not be a priority during the 2016 offseason.
As for Whiteside, he’s expected to make a huge leap in salary as a free agent, with some projections going as high as $20 million a year. But there’s a connection to family, home and community that could be too much to pass up.
He returned to Gastonia for a week-long trip this past summer and, as the Sun Sentinel’s Shandel Richardson put it, was “greeted by several friends and relatives who called him an inspiration.”
Even strangers look at his success story as a reason to keep climbing:
"The highlight (of the trip) was an aspiring rapper, who Whiteside had never met, saying his story was the reason for refusing to give up.Just like Whiteside."
"“Everybody was just talking about how proud they are of me and how they’re not giving up on their dreams,” Whiteside said. “I’m glad that I inspire a lot of people. It’s just a blessing of just a journey I started and want to continue.”"
It’s not that much of a stretch to imagine that Whiteside would find Charlotte’s proximity to home an attractive reason to join the team. And, while Heat fans are generally convinced that Miami will find a way to lock up their young center to a long-term contract, the team might be focusing on other free agents — namely Kevin Durant — next summer.
Miami fans don’t want to consider the possibility of losing Whiteside, who provides so much of what had been missing during the “Big 3” era, namely rebounding and shot blocking. But they certainly didn’t expect a former superstar on the roster to come home in 2014, when LeBron James spurned the Heat to join the Cleveland Cavaliers.
While it might be too early to tell exactly what Whiteside’s plans are for next summer, for a young player that has always to looked to the support of family and friends during his NBA journey, when it comes to free agency, there might be no place like home.
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