Dion Waiters has yet to see any NBA court this year due to suspensions from the Miami Heat. Although Waiters wasn’t necessarily suspended for the gummy bear incident specifically, he has been suspended multiple times for “conduct detrimental to the team.” He had a rift with Erik Spoelstra about how much playing time he would get to start the season to start that conduct. During this suspension, Dion Waiters has gone to Syracuse to talk to someone he sees as a father figure, Syracuse’s Head Coach Jim Boeheim. If you remember correctly, Dion Waiters went to Syracuse and played under Boeheim. When asked about his suspension while there at Syracuse, this is what he had to say via Donna Ditota of Syracuse.com:
“I just wanted to come up and talk to Coach,” Waiters said. “I know that’s a person who will always be there for me if I ever need anything. It’s a chance for me to come up, be around, talk to the coaches, things like that. And that’s important.”
“I’m not going to lie to you, I’m in a great place,” he said. “I can only control what I can control at the end of the day, so some things you just can’t allow to take your head the other way, some things happen for a reason. If you stay locked in, if you believe and trust in yourself, trust in the work you put in, you know, it’s a minor setback. It happens. It’s life. You learn from it. The only thing I can do is move forward. Stay focused. Stay even-keeled. Let everything else take care of itself.”
Dion Waiters has claimed that he is ready to come work for the Miami Heat off his ankle injury and suspension.
“I’m a competitor. Any time you work hard and you envision something a certain way and it’s not going as you planned and you see it, you know, you go back to the drawing board and you figure it out. That’s what it’s about – figuring it out,” he said. “So continue to work, always stay confident. Just having the right people in your corner make things a lot easier. (It’s) being a competitor and wanting to play and me being healthy. Because you set goals. It’s taking a little longer but I still got those same goals, that same ambition. It’s not the end of my story.”
If it were me, trade him. The Miami Heat are doing just fine without Waiters. Especially since Jimmy Butler will lead the Heat to the Playoffs. Sure, this saga right now may be over, but will there be another one? Do you want to deal with that drama is you really don’t have to? Plenty of teams are looking for Waiters type of scoring for their team, like the Orlando Magic. Watch his name be in a lot of trade deadline talks. But for now, let’s just get Waiters on the field.
