The Miami Heat were one of the harder teams to figure out coming into this season. The Heat finished just outside the playoff picture in the Eastern Conference with a .500 mark of 41-41 last season.
This season, the team has portrayed major inconsistency as they’ve shown flashes of being a contender but at times also look like one of the league’s worst. This up-and-down play can also be applied directly to shooting guard Dion Waiters who earned himself a 4 year, $52M contract this summer.
Firmly entrenched as one of the team’s best scorers and better starters, the topic of Waiters coming off the bench has been brought up by fans recently. When asked about the chatter by Palm Beach Post’s Tom D’Angelo, Waiters had a straight forward response and shut down any ideas of him starting the game on the bench:
“I’m a starter in this league, man, that’s who I am. We’re going to nip that in the bud right now. I’m not coming off no bench.”
Dion Waiters has played both roles a good amount during his 6 seasons in the NBA, namely with the Cleveland Cavaliers and Oklahoma City Thunder. In Miami though, Waiters has been the man at shooting guard since his arrival and that doesn’t seem to be changing anytime soon.
Overall, this season has been a mixed bag for Waiters and the Heat. Trying to keep pace in an improved Eastern Conference is a tough task but the Heat were expected by some to be a team firmly in the playoff picture.
Waiters is still scoring over 15 points on a per-game basis but it’s been his efficiency that has become problematic. Though he’s capable of dropping 30 on any given night, there are still too many dud games out of Waiters, something we should expect him to reverse if he hopes to be the long-term starter in Miami.
