Miami Heat guard Dion Waiters is out indefinitely with a sprained left ankle, according to Ira Winderman of the Sun Sentinel. He sustained the injury Friday in a loss to the Dallas Mavericks.
Head coach Erick Spoelstra gave an outlook for Waiters moving forward. “We’ll evaluate him every day,” Spoelstra said, with the Heat’s next game not until Tuesday against the visiting Orlando Magic. “He had an X-ray [Friday] night. He had an MRI [Saturday] morning. Both were negative. It is a sprained ankle. So he’ll have to go through our process of getting it better, getting it healthier, getting it stronger. And then we’ll go from there.”
Ankle issues are nothing new for Dion Waiters. He missed the final 13 games last season with a sprained left ankle. It is worth noting that he opted to not have surgery on that ankle, a procedure that would have sidelined him for the first half of this season.
“If you watched the film, he just rolled it,” Spoelestra continued. “It could happen with his right ankle. So it’s not related other than the fact that that ankle has given him some problems over his career, and that’s not unusual.”
There is a financial incentive for Waiters to stay healthy too. He has a $1.1 million bonus if he appears in at least 70 games this season.
