I'm not surprised that Whiteside took a minimum, but a bit surprised he took it from here. Probably a bitter pill to swallow being Rudy's backup after any previous beef. But I think there was probably a much different spin put on this. He was probably sold on the fact that we run a very specific defense that would be much more tailored to his needs than anywhere else, and he just needs to come in and spell Gobert for backup minutes and it may make him shine in that role, and if he's viewing Rudy getting a lot of credit for what he's doing, and then he's plugged into the exact system that he thinks he can accomplish the same thing, that this could be a high reward for him (in terms of exposure and attention). The other end of it is if this idea was a selling point for him or if it was more the Wade relationship.
I think it's a much easier sell for Quin to get him to play a specific way as he can subtly say "hey, look how successful Rudy is and here you're a minimum guy... you've got some talents and let's use those talents to give you the same opportunity." He's a guy who can clearly block shots. I don't think it's hard for him to understand the obvious of Rudy winning 3 DPOYs that he and Quin can take that ability and put it into the right places to transform him from a stat-chasing shot-blocker to a legitimate rim-protector, because I think he's got all those tools and he'd have to have some level of awareness (else he probably wouldn't have signed here) that Quin and Rudy can help take that to the next level.
