NEW YORK _ The Miami Heat will be without center Hassan Whiteside for Wednesday night's game against the New York Knicks at Madison Square Garden due to soreness in his left knee.
Whiteside, who missed five games after suffering a bone bruise on the knee in the Oct. 18 season-opening road loss to the Orlando Magic, sat out Saturday's practice in Chicago, but still played in Sunday's victory over the Chicago Bulls and Tuesday's loss to the Cleveland Cavaliers.
Whiteside was uneven with his play in both of those games, benched for the fourth quarter of Sunday's victory at the United Center and then ineffective defensively Tuesday against Cavaliers outside-shooting big man Kevin Love.
The game against the Knicks completes a four-game trip, with the Heat then to return to AmericanAirlines Arena for a Friday night game against the Charlotte Hornets and a Sunday night game against the Golden State Warriors.
Whiteside spoke after Tuesday's loss in Cleveland as if he expected to play Wednesday.
"We can't be hanging our heads on this," he said of the loss to the Cavaliers while looking ahead to the Knicks game. "The game is in what? Fifteen hours? Twenty-four hours? On to the next one."
The Heat then announced shortly before 3 p.m. Wednesday that Whiteside would be out.
Whiteside played 24:08 in Friday's victory over the Minnesota Timberwolves at the start of this four-game trip.
"I felt it a little bit at the beginning," Whiteside said of that game. "It's still been sore. It's just been sore. So it's going to take a while before I'm actually 100 percent back where I was, when I was in Orlando."
Coach Erik Spoelstra said he felt holding Whiteside out of Saturday's practice was prudent.
"I can tell just from the travel and how he was in shootaround and during the game (Friday) that he was a little bit sore," Spoelstra said Saturday. "So I anticipated he wouldn't be able to practice today.
"But that's not highly unusual. He hasn't been able to practice a couple of times the last 10 days, two weeks. We'll just see how he feels."
