What, you didn’t think we would stop talking about the NBA’s annual general manager survey just because it’s two weeks old, did you?
Because we’re not going to.
At least not in Miami.
Hassan Whiteside was asked if he cared that he didn’t receive a single vote in the “Who is the best center in the NBA?” category. It turns out he doesn’t, per the Miami Herald‘s Barry Jackson:
What did Heat center Hassan Whiteside think of not getting a single vote in the best center category of the recent NBA.com general manager poll?
“I don’t really care what those GMs say,” Whiteside said. “99 percent of them said no to me anyway, so I don’t expect them to come back and say, ‘No, he’s good,’ after we said no.
“If I listened to what everybody said about me, I would probably be in the YMCA still. I never got any just due in my career but I don’t steer away from what I’m going to do with the Heat.”
This is a good stance for Whiteside to assume. It’s the only stance for him to assume.
Criticism by omission is real, and it can be difficult to deal with, but there’s no sense taking swipes at an semi-anonymous survey—especially one as trivial as the general manager poll.
I mean, just look at who received the most votes for the unofficial best-center award: DeAndre Jordan. Which is crazy. If you want to argue that he’s the best defensive center, or one of the NBA’s three best centers, people will listen. But there is no way he’s better than DeMarcus Cousins.
If it makes Whiteside feel any better, ambiguous position designations make this a tough question to crack. Anthony Davis has spent most of his career at power forward, but played mostly center last year, and thus received votes. It was a similar story for Draymond Green; he spent most of his minutes at the 4, and still he received votes. It’s becoming harder and harder to slot a player under one umbrella because positional descriptions and responsibilities are obsolete. Everyone nowadays is expected to everything.
Whiteside, for his part, is thriving in that NBA, this year away from the safety nets that were multiple aging All-Stars. That, and the fact that he’s proving doubters wrong merely by stepping on the court and playing every night, should be enough validation for him.
