NBA Season Preview 2019-20: Every team’s biggest question

Portland Trail Blazers: Can they unlock Hassan Whiteside?

A trip to the Western Conference Finals can hardly be considered a poor outcome to a season, but for the Portland Trail Blazers, there’s perhaps a lingering sense of missed potential. The turning point came in March, when center Jusuf Nurkic suffered a gruesome leg injury just weeks before the NBA Playoffs. Nurkic had been in the midst of his finest season as a pro, and while the Blazers would finish the regular season an NBA-best 8-2 before surging to the conference finals, they never seemed to have quite the same ceiling in his absence.

Currently without a concrete timetable for his return, Nurkic stands to miss a significant chunk of the upcoming season. The Blazers will have to continue to compensate for his absence for a while longer, and with as competitive as the West looks to be this season, whatever answer they find could be crucial.

Enter Hassan Whiteside, acquired from the Miami Heat as part of their three-team, blockbuster deal for Jimmy Butler. At this stage of his career, Whiteside is something of an enigma. The luster of his improbable rise to NBA stardom has worn off, and the many prominent warts in his game have subsequently been exposed. Much like the aforementioned Andre Drummond, he excels in surface-level stats, as he hits a high percentage of his shots, grabs a ton of rebounds and blocks a gaudy number of shots. Despite the numbers, though, he seems to lack tangible impact, offering little in the way of offensive versatility and often seeming disengaged as a defender.

Can the Blazers rein in Whiteside’s worst tendencies and unlock the ceiling that he appeared to have when he splashed onto the scene five years ago? They may need to if they want to finish in the upper echelon of the Western playoff picture.