Heat Twitter is on fire lately, defending and scolding their favorite son who’s polarizing personality has caused a fascinating gulf between the fan base. Some find him endearing while others deem his antics are becoming a bit tiresome.

However you want to paint it, the reality is Hassan Whiteside over the past six games is sitting fourth quarters while making funny pouty faces on the bench. The coaching staff (really, the NBA in general) wants to go small, but they don’t think he is built for that. Meanwhile, trade rumors have already circulated, which begs the question: Does Whiteside fit in the NBA’s small-ball era?

Here are four thoughts that might answer that question through the use of advanced stats.

1. Miami’s Most Effective Version of Small-Ball

For starters, one of Miami’s better units Miami has been the Wade, Dragic, Winslow, Deng and Whiteside lineup. In 74 minutes this season, they are outscoring teams by 26 points per 100 possessions while having a defensive rating a hair under 82.

For naming purposes, let’s call this the “I Wish It Was LeBron at the 4 Lineup” or “IWIWLAT4” for short. It’s also one of their faster lineups, it has a pace factor of 101.45. For the season, Miami is 27^th in pace at 96 possessions per 48 minutes. To put this all into context, if the IWIWLAT4 lineup played all 48 minutes, they would rank fourth in the league in pace.

So, it’s a fast lineup that features Deng at the 4. But what’s most notable is it lacks true shooting (the lineup shoots 31 percent from 3) despite posting an offensive rating of 108. A healthy dosage comes from Whiteside pick-and-rolls with mostly Wade as the distributor while the other comes from Dragic when he commands a faster tempo.

Despite the IWIWLAT4 unit being so successful, it has only seen around 10 minutes of action since Deng has returned from his hamstring injury. Since then, the lineup has been abysmal. They are a minus 34.5 points per 100 possessions with an offensive rating of 66 and a pace factor of 95.

I know, it’s a lot to digest. But what is most important to note is those 10 minutes are an absurdly small sample size. It’s difficult to tell anything substantive from it, but it’s still puzzling why the coaching staff doesn’t go to it more frequently. I suppose it’s because of how bad it’s been most recently, but again, you can’t tell much from such a small sample.

2. Can Bosh & Whiteside Co-Exist?

The Bosh-Whiteside tandem is the main concern among Heat fans. Can they co-exist on the court, or should Miami close games with only one big man?

So, while Hassan and Bosh haven’t been bad when they have shared the court, they haven’t really been good either. They are actually pretty neutral, with a positive, but minuscule net gain of 0.6 points per 100 possessions. So armed with that information, it would seem wise for Erik Spoelstra to finish games with one big, rather than playing them together.

In their last five games, Chris Bosh and Hassan Whiteside have only played 38 second half minutes together and are being outscored by 11 points per 100 possessions. This is why Spoelstra has moved away from playing the two together as of late

And those last five games include losses to Washington, Charlotte and Indiana and wins against Memphis and Atlanta. What’s noteworthy is the three losses are to teams that play small, and judging from the Whiteside and Bosh net rating, it’s reasonable to not play the two together when teams are going small.

Even against a team like Memphis, Miami opted for small ball versus the bigger Memphis lineup. In that game, the Wade-less and Whiteside-less lineup brought Miami out of a double-digit deficit. The smaller and better-shooting lineup of Dragic, Bosh, Green, Deng and Winslow was incredibly destructive, in their nine minutes together. Together, they posted an offensive rating of 145 and a defensive rating of 88.2.

Again, those numbers are fun with a small sample, but I would imagine that we will see more of that lineup going forward.

3. Whiteside’s Elite Defensive Presence

Something else to consider is Whiteside’s value defensively. He leads the Heat in defensive box plus/minus, by a lot, with a rating of 4.8. That rating is good for fourth in the NBA and he’s also third in the NBA in defensive win shares, ahead of players like Draymond Green and Jimmy Butler.

He’s also a legitimate rim protector. Whiteside is allowing only 43 percent in the restricted area, good for fourth in the league (minimum 20 minutes per game). To put that into context the 76ers shoot 54 percent in the restricted area, so Hassan Whiteside renders players less efficient than the 76ers near the rim.

But, what is important is his small ball defense. In the last five games, the Heat are allowing 105 points per 100 possessions while Whiteside’s been on the court. That’s no bueno, even though his rim protection numbers are still very good.

In the same span, he is only allowing 43 percent shooting near the rim, despite blocking only two shots per game (down from his usual four). But defense isn’t limited to just rim protection. What happens when teams go small, is they typically involve a lot of 1-5 pick-and-rolls, where the 5 man is a shooter, or even sometimes, a ball handler.

That puts an incredible amount of stress on the Miami defense, because if they switch on the pick-and-roll, then you leave Whiteside on an island by himself with a shooter. That shooter usually pulls him away from his rim protecting responsibility leaving an open lane for drives.

Even if Miami traps the ball handler, they would be in a similar situation. Whiteside isn’t Bosh who can rotate quickly back to his man after a soft or hard trap while cutting off a desirable angle.

Hassan is a 7-foot center who is big and strong, and while athletic, isn’t as nimble or as light-footed as bigs like Bosh. Asking him to run that defense against quicker players is not only putting Hassan in a bad position, but Miami as a whole.

4. Whiteside’s Turnover Ratio & Offensive Ability

The big argument is, “well, if he is being punished on defense he should be able to do the same versus an undersized opponent.” Well, that statement is true, however, Whiteside isn’t Hakeem Olajuwon in the post. In fact, Whiteside turns the ball over 19 percent of the time in the post, which leads all his peers (minimum of 3 field goal attempts per game).

Whiteside also passes on only 8.8 percent of his post-ups, which is the worst in the NBA (same qualifications as before). Additionally, he’s shooting a woeful 42 percent in the post this season and is scoring at a rate of 0.68 points per possession on post-ups, which is pretty terrible.

Now, I had tons of fun video to show you, but I can’t embed NBA.com’s videos in this post. But if you watch all of Whiteside’s missed shots from the post, you will notice that a lot of it adds up to poor positioning.

He catches the ball further out than I’m sure he likes and tries to force things rather than repost for better position. But when he does get deep positioning and doesn’t turn over the ball, it typically ends well. He can finish strong through contact and has a decent touch on his hook shot, which he shot 55 percent on last season.

But something to truly rave about is his pick-and-roll play, which is the strongest part of his offensive game. When Whiteside is the roll man in a pick-and-roll set, he is scoring 1.30 points per possessions (PPP), which is third in the entire league (minimum of 30 field goal attempts). He’s only made 38 field goals as the roll man while Bosh nearly doubles him at 78. averaging a respectable 1.19 PPP, which is still very good considering he’s attempting more shots.

In terms of his offense, Hassan has 40 assisted shots by Dwyane Wade. By far the most of any teammates. They have played a tick over 500 minutes together. Dragic and Whiteside have also played a little over 500 minutes together and Dragic only has 14 assists to Hassan. Dragic has almost three times fewer assists to him than Dwyane does in very similar minutes.

At this point, a lot of the math would indicate that Whiteside doesn’t fit into the smaller lineups, but all we have is small samples. What also skews a lot of the numbers is that the team has a losing record as of late and it isn’t all his fault. So team numbers are down all around, but Whiteside’s numbers take an impact as well.

I don’t anticipate Whiteside sitting every fourth quarter the remainder of the season, but I do think there will be stretches where they simply cannot play him. Sure, his turnovers are a problem, but I really expect his numbers to increase because he’s not that bad and I firmly believe that if he gains deeper positioning, he will be much more successful at it.