NASSAU, BAHAMAS -- Hassan Whiteside took Friday morning's practice off to rest his sore left knee, but he expects to be back on the court with his teammates on Saturday.

The Heat's newly signed $98 million center said the soreness is not in the same knee he injured in Game 3 of the Eastern Conference semifinals against the Toronto Raptors, which forced him to sit out the rest of the playoffs.

"My knee is just sore," Whiteside said. "I was just going to rest it. I'm just resting it."

"It's a totally different thing [than the injury in the playoffs]. We've been going so hard and it's been awhile since I played on a consistent basis like this. It's not a big deal."

Whiteside sprained the MCL in his right knee last May and did not have surgery. The Heat brought him along cautiously in summer workouts.

"It's more about being smart on the fourth day of camp," coach Erik Spoelstra said. "I anticipate he should be going tomorrow. He was able to do quite a bit on the side. I don't think he'll want to do that workout again."

Whiteside said he spent a lot of time lifting weights on Friday and still building up a good sweat.

"It wasn't really a day off," he said.

Whiteside missed one game last season with a sore right knee, one game with right tendinitis and six games with a strained left hip. In his first season with the Heat, he missed one game with a left toe injury, one with a sprained right ankle and two games with a right hand laceration.

He hasn't injured his left knee since the 2010-11 season -- his rookie year -- when he was with the Sacramento Kings. Whiteside missed the final 37 games of the season after suffering a partial patellar tendon tear in his knee that season.

The Heat on Friday went with Willie Reed, James Johnson and several undersized wings at center in practice, Spoelstra said.

"We're pretty deep at that position," Spoelstra said of the center spot. "And we'll have [Josh McRoberts there] when he's able to step back in the fold. But if we have to go deeper we want to develop different layers with our versatility. We showed that last year when Justise [Winslow] played some minutes there."