“Portland was my second option,” Whiteside said at the team’s Saturday shootaround in Portland. “I would have came here.”
Presently, Portland doesn’t have much of any team identity outside of Damian Lillard and C.J. McCollum, so a talented defensive center like Whiteside would have been a godsend. The Blazers currently have the NBA’s worst defensive rating (109.6). The Heat are not a good team (at all), but Whiteside’s presence makes them an above average defensive team (10th-best defensive rating in the NBA). The Blazers’ defense is atrocious, and having Whiteside likely would have brought them up a tier or two.
