The people around Miami Heat center Hassan Whiteside will tell you he's grown from the seemingly immature big man of seasons past to a player ready to give up personal ambitions for his team.

Many would have expected the Heat to trade their towering shot blocker over the summer, but he's sticking around for now and head coach Erik Spoelstra is prepared to grind with him another season.

Whiteside's frustrations last season were well documented. His desire to change his game to accommodate the way the game is being played right now is understandable, especially as he can operate as a modern-era big man who shoots from mid-range and from beyond the arc.

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“If you know me—which 95 percent of y'all don’t—you don’t know I got that jumper,” the center said in an Instagram video during the summer in an apparent shot at Spoelstra.

“There’s a difference between, ‘You can’t shoot’ and not allowed [to shoot],” he said after draining a three from around 25 feet and walking away before the ball fell through the hoop.

Prior to that, the player had lashed out at the Heat in the press.

“It’s bulls**t. It’s really bulls**t, man. There’s a lot of teams that could use a center," he told reporters after being made to sit out the fourth quarter and overtime against the Brooklyn Nets in March.

There have been a few more incidents involving an angry Whiteside over the past few seasons, including an elbow to the chin of Boban Marjanovic back in 2016.

Heat veteran Dwyane Wade unleashed on the big man in the locker room after witnessing the meltdown but later invited his teammate over to his house for lunch in an attempt to find out what was really going on behind the babyface.

Apparently, the big man had been holding a grudge after bouncing around the NBA, Europe and Asia. And, in a very recent interview with Bleacher Report, he revealed what he told Wade.

“When I came into the NBA, I was really angry,” he said. “I feel like I never got a fair shot. I was just really mad at the NBA. I was mad at people. I was getting overlooked every summer league, all the workouts. The team would say I had a great workout. There would be workouts where I didn’t miss a shot, a perfect workout. And then they’d get some guy that wasn’t even good.

“It was just a really frustrating part of my life and I came in so mad at all the GMs, so mad at everybody playing for them GMs."

The real turnaround, though, was initiated by Spoelstra. The coach spent five hours speaking to Whiteside at a Miami hotel in June after deciding that enough was enough. After speaking about life in general and stressing the importance of being a good teammate, Spoelstra recalled how Heat fans had turned on him during a game in the first season of the Big Three era.

The Miami support chanted for Pat Riley's return as they let Spo know their feelings; the coach felt helpless.

“Be ready for it,” he told Whiteside. “Because if you don’t turn things around, it will happen to you. It happened to me. How will you respond if the fans turn against you?”

“We’re in this together,” he said after a pause, beckoning a nod from his player. And it was at that moment Spoelstra realized he had finally gotten through to the center.

Should we expect to see a different player next season? Probably. But it will take at least a few months before Whiteside can have fans believing he's changed for the better. In the meantime, they can all just enjoy the Wade farewell tour.

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