Hassan Whiteside is not traveling with the Miami Heat to Toronto for Game 5 of the Eastern Conference Semifinals on Wednesday.
Head coach Erik Spoelstra broke the news to reporters on a conference call Tuesday, essentially rendering Whiteside “Friday-or-later-to-day,” in the words of Ira Winderman. I’d call it “Friday-to-day,” myself.
The Heat got by without their rim protector in Game 4, winning 94-87 in overtime largely by daring the Raptors to beat them with jump-shooting. Without Whiteside in the paint, the Heat collapsed aggressively, trusting that DeMar DeRozan would heave low-EV jumpers and that the Raptors’ cold shooting from outside would continue. He did, and it did – the Raptors shot 39.3 percent as a team, 6-of-20 on threes, and only managed 19 free-throw attempts.
It worked, for a night, even with the center rotation that took his place playing poorly for the most part. Amar’e Stoudemire drew the start and was downright terrible in his 12 minutes, Udonis Haslem played 10 defensive-minded minutes with five rebounds, and Josh McRoberts was not a disaster in 21 minutes. The Heat also ditched on a center entirely for about 10 minutes, and they were a plus-14 in those minutes. The Raptors matched small and did so poorly, so expect Spoelstra to try the Dragic-Wade-Johnson-Deng-Winslow look earlier than the late fourth in Game 5. Toronto couldn’t hang with that group defensively, allowing far too much penetration, and Dwane Casey now has a tough call between staying big and sacrificing offense or matching small and giving up the rim.
The absence of both centers – the Raptors are without Jonas Valanciunas for the series – probably favors Toronto slightly, but it’s anything but clear cut. Toronto is a moderate -145 favorite in the series, essentially an allowance for home court, and they’re 4.5-point favorites in Game 5. That’s great. Now they just have to play to that perceived advantage.
It remains awful that Whiteside and Valanciunas are hurt. That was the most fun matchup in the series and the only one where both guys really came to play every minute they were out there. Sigh.
