This is His Motivation for Playing

In that afternoon's scrimmage, Whiteside showed off his impressive physical gifts in front of the Grizzlies players.

His huge hands and long arms made him like a human rebounding vacuum cleaner. As long as he raised his arms, rebounds seemed to get drawn to him like magnets.

His defensive positioning was decent, and he was extremely active on help defense, often swatting shots away with outrageous chase-down blocks.

However, Whiteside's one-on-one defense was somewhat worrying. Gasol scored over him three straight times, shaking him so badly that he was left completely disoriented each time.

Whiteside wanted too badly to prove himself. It seemed that every time he defended, he wanted to swat the opponent's basketball into the stands. But that mindset would only put him at a disadvantage against elite big men.

And Duncan, whom he would face tomorrow, was only craftier than Gasol.

As for offense, Whiteside was practically nonexistent. His touch was actually fairly soft, and he could shoot hook shots, but aside from that touch, Whiteside's other offensive moves were an outright disaster.

NBA-level offense usually involved combining and chaining together several different moves. Good touch alone could not make someone a scoring master.

As a result, Whiteside could basically only score through dunks. And just as Joerger had said, Whiteside could not even run the most basic pick-and-roll properly right now. He did not know how to adjust his pick-and-roll strategy under different circumstances.

Still, considering it was only his first day with the Grizzlies, that flaw was understandable.

Overall, Whiteside's performance was quite impressive and exceeded the expectations of many Grizzlies players. Even the ever-careful Conley had gotten his shot stuffed by Whiteside during practice today.

The way he had put up 24 points, 16 rebounds, and 4 blocks in the G League last game