Towards the end of Zero Dark Thirty, Jessica Chastain’s character, Maya, is sitting at a table full of G-Men. They’re discussing whether to recommend approving an operation to raid the possible hideout of Osama bin Laden, and the CIA Director asks everyone how sure they are that the target is where they think he is. 60 percent. 80 percent. A soft 60 percent. Nobody is sure. And then Maya, more familiar with the situation than anyone else, interrupts.

“100 percent he's there. Okay, fine, 95 percent because I know how certainty freaks you guys out, but it's 100.”

Over the past three months, nobody has quite known what to make of Hassan Whiteside. He’s posted big game after big game, having not just a very good season for a player who essentially came out of nowhere but having a historically good season for any player, anywhere. But the sample size has always been so far, it’s been tough to outright say, ‘He is legitimately this good’. The basketball community is too smart to fall for a short stretch of great play, so we exercise caution and enter wait-and-see mode.

After Whiteside posted 18 points, 25 rebounds and 4 blocks – the first 25-rebound game for anyone in their first 52 career games since Hakeem Olajuwon in 1985 – Dwyane Wade is done with all of that. Certainty doesn’t freak him out.

“The fluke is over,” Wade said.

“He is for real about what he does. He protects the basket, he rebounds the ball very well and when he gets mad enough he will dunk over everybody.”

That’s a unique package: a shot-blocker, a rebounder and a finisher all in one. Let’s take a look at just what Whiteside is doing in each category.

BLOCKS

Everyone remembers Whiteside’s 12-block game against the Chicago Bulls, but it wasn’t just a one-time thing. With Babadook arms that envelope the paint and the instincts to match, Whiteside has multiple blocks in 22 of his 33 games this season as he thwarts slashers and shooters alike.

This year, teams are shooting 45.8 percent against Whiteside when they challenge him at the rim. He’s blocking 9.5 percent of all shots taken when he’s on the floor. If he keeps that up, he’ll be just the 12th player to maintain that rate in the last 30 years, placing him next to Serge Ibaka, Jim McIlvaine, Alonzo Mourning and the Lord of Blocks Manute Bol.

“He is our enforcer down there,” Goran Dragic said. “For me it is so much easier to play defense because if I get beat I know he is going to be there for us.

“He can play the kind of game that he had tonight every day. It’s easy for him.”

POWER

Toward the end of Wednesday’s game against the Lakers, with the outcome still in question, Byron Scott elected to go with a very small, spacing-focused lineup. While the shooting kept Los Angeles in the game, they ran into the same small-ball issues the HEAT occasionally struggled with over the past few years.

When you go small, it’s not only about who is defending the opposing center. It’s about who is going to have to help in the middle of the floor. The more size you take off the floor, you have to be that much closer to perfect in your rotations. Otherwise…

“When I’m running with D-Wade, it’s really hard to stop,” Whiteside said. “Either D-Wade is going to score it, or it’s going to be a lob. You can choose which one you want to see.”

Though he’s flashed a smooth jumper and some post moves that are more polished than you might expect, Whiteside’s true offensive value remains rooted in his ability to catch just about anything thrown his way and finish with power.

This year, Whiteside is shooting 71.6 percent in the restricted area – placing him among names such as Anthony Davis, Tyson Chandler and Marc Gasol – to go with a .630 true-shooting percentage.

“A year ago I was talking about it and now I’m showing people that I can do this,” Whiteside said. “I was in North Carolina just talking about what I could do in the NBA and everyone was laughing at me, and now you guys [members of the media] are here.”

REBOUNDS

Now things get a little crazy. If we use rebounding percentage, which tells us how many available boards (missed shots) a player collects while on the court, Whiteside is having the second-best rebounding season on record. No, that’s not a typo. We don’t have pre-1970’s data for guys like Wilt Chamberlain and Bill Russell, but since then Whiteside’s rebounding percentage of 27.8 has him behind only Dennis Rodman’s insane ’94-95 season. And ahead of Rodman’s other four best seasons.

“He is so dominant,” Dragic said. “Jordan Hill is a pretty good rebounder and when you see Hassan reaching over him [by a lot] it is kind of crazy. He is our enforcer down there.”

“He is what you call special,” Wade said. “He is so long. If anything comes off the rim he gets the opportunity to touch it and they have to put three guys on him sometimes to stop him. He just gives us opportunities to play a more pressured defense. The sky is the limit.”

There’s a method of Whiteside’s box-score lines, too. Like all rebounding greats, he’s making educated guesses whenever the shot goes up. There’s no certainty on the boards, but the best know how to identify the odds.

“It’s just reading it off the rim,” Whiteside said. “I’ve got really long arms. It’s just getting position and knowing where your teammates shots are going to go.

“Normally when D-Wade does his floater, if it doesn’t go in its normally going to hit the back of the rim and kick back to the free-throw line. And Luol Deng, when he shoots in the corner, it’s normally going to go opposite.”

PUT IT TOGETHER AND WHAT DO YOU GET

Blocks. Dunks. Rebounds. Plenty of guys can get good at one of those skills. Fewer can master two. But all three? This might be unprecedented in the modern era.

Even if we take a little bit off Whiteside’s totals, bringing him down to a rebounding percentage of 20, a block percentage of 8 and a true-shooting percentage of 60, the list of players to reach all three marks in a single season in the last 30 years is:

1. Hassan Whiteside

2. End of List

“He is a unique talent,” Deng said. “He is coming into his own. The more he plays the better he will get. He definitely affects the game in so many different ways. Not a lot of people have the ability to do that. It is very impressive because he doesn’t even need the ball. I don’t know if I’ve seen anything like it.”

It bears repeating: Whiteside isn’t just having a great season, he’s having a historically good season through these first 33 games with Miami. It’s completely, totally and utterly unprecedented.

Certainty might freak us out at times, but the longer we wait and see with Whiteside, the more reason to believe he has offered. At the very least, it seems the guys he plays with every day have seen enough.

Stats courtesy NBA.com and Basketball-Reference.com