Over the summer, LeBron James reportedly called Dion Waiters days before he made the decision to return home to Cleveland advising the former Syracuse star to “be ready”. In James’ SI letter, he cited Waiters as someone he thought he could help “elevate”. All of this to say that James clearly thought he could turn Waiters’ career trajectory around and after 35 games the King had seen enough to know the vision James has for Waiters will never mesh with the vision Waiters has for Waiters.
One of the toughest dilemmas facing head coaches and general managers in the professional sports is coming to the realization that all extremely talented players don’t ever turn out, or play, the way they expected them too when the team either traded for or drafted that particular player; Waiters’ development with Cleveland over the last couple of years personified this dangerous game. Waiters is still just 23 years old, but the Cavs are in win-now mode with James’ body breaking down more and more by the day (along with the rumored possibility he may leave the team once again if things don’t turn around). Cleveland couldn’t afford to keep rolling the dice on a 25 percent three-point shooter who only gets to the line 1.8 times a night with the way the Cavs’ roster is currently constructed.
To this point, Waiters’ career has not been what most analysts and writers probably expected it to be. It’s been a disaster, for the most part, and although it’s easy to point the finger entirely at Waiters; it’s a bit more complicated than that. Waiters falls into the unfortunate category of “wrong draft position for the wrong team” that so many players seem to find themselves in year after year.
Former Cleveland Cavaliers general manager Chris Grant deserves just as much blame, if not more, for Waiters’ poor development since being drafted by the Cavs with the No. 4 pick in the 2012 NBA Draft. Since that very short time Waiters’ has had three different head coaches, none of which you could point to as above-average NBA head coaches, while dealing with the pressure of living up to his high-draft selection. It was a recipe for disaster for a guard with Waiters’ personality mixed with an organization that squandered its lottery chances in atrocious fashion while trying to find its way in the post-LeBron era.
Everything has constantly been changing for Dion Waiters; head coaches, general managers, role on the team, roster changes, but most importantly, organizational expectation changes. Most 23-year-old lottery prospects have time on their side, but when James came back to Cleveland this past summer the one thing Waiters had left to point to during his struggles, time, was no longer valid. He had, to quote James again, to “be ready”. Waiters wasn’t and Cleveland has bitten the bullet yet again trading away another former lottery pick.
If there was ever a team that could “fix” Dion Waiters’ game, it’d be Oklahoma City. You could make the case Sam Presti’s club has the best track record in the NBA in developing young NBA talent. Still, the question has to be asked, is Waiters too far gone? Dion Waiters’ game is fascinating, so much so that’s it worth it for the Thunder to take a flyer on him, but the idea of what Waiters is at this point in his career has pulled too far away from who he actually is on the basketball court in reality, which is just not a very good team basketball player. And that’s concerning.
The Atlanta Hawks went through the same agonizing process with Lou Williams when Hawks’ head coach Mike Budenholzer was hired and the club tried to turn him into what the Spurs’ turned Manu Ginobli into; the perfect sixth man. Injuries played a factor, sure, but Lou never fit Budenholzer’s scheme, so the Hawks sold low on him and traded him to the Toronto Raptors in a salary-dump deal and now he’s having one of the best seasons of his career for a Toronto team that embraces who Lou actually is on the basketball court, not who they’d like him to be. Sometimes it is that simple and just accepting role players for who they are and figuring out how to work with what they actually can do for your team rather than what you hope they can do.
In Oklahoma City, Waiters won’t be under the same microscope he found himself under in Cleveland. His role will be different, a recurring theme in his career, but he finds himself, now, on a team with stability. Had the Thunder drafted Waiters out of Syracuse I wonder if he would have turned out to be the same kind of player he is now or more of a hybrid of James Harden and Reggie Jackson? Had he been able to learn from Russell Westbrook, Jackson, Kevin Durant or maybe even spending time on the Thunder’s D-League affiliate the Oklahoma City Blue, would he be a consistent, serious contributor for a contender? That’s the tricky, and frustrating, thing about playing this devilish “what-if” game.
The forgotten team in the deal, the New York Knicks, traded away a solid, young wing and J.R. Smith just, well, because. Yes, there’s a little more to it than that, but New York basketball czar Phil Jackson flipped Smith and Iman Shumpert to Cleveland for more cap space in the next couple of years. Finding a taker for Smith’s contract was going to be extremely difficult, but Jackson found a team desperate for wing depth, and pounced on it even if it meant he got nothing else in return other than the satisfaction of not having to watch Smith play basketball 82 times a year.
The Cavs took a pretty big risk betting that Waiters is a lost cause, but the team doesn’t need more offensive-minded players; they need defensive pieces. That’s why trading for Shumpert makes a lot of sense, but taking on Smith’s contract, on the other hand, doesn’t as the team just dealt an eccentric guard with efficiency issues for another eccentric guard with efficiency issues. Sure, Shumpert is the bigger prize for Cleveland, but by dealing Waiters the Cleveland front office has waved the white flag on another lottery pick they failed to develop that could have been a huge help for James as he exits his prime over the next couple of years.
Having Kevin Love and Kyrie Irving helps ease the pain a tad, but with Tristan Thompson potentially moving on next summer, too, the Cavs will have to rely more and more on the Shawn Marion’s and Mike Miller’s of the world rather than all the young talent could have cultivated that they instead squandered over the last three years. Only time will tell just how much it will cost them.
