The Miami Heat look to have a pretty deep roster and rotation heading into the season. The enigmatic Dion Waiters should be a main cog though.
When you think about Dion Waiters of Miami Heat, what is the first thing that comes to mind? Some will think prolific scorer, some will think moody player, while some will even look back on his time at Syracuse as the sixth man microwave for the Orange.
When thinking about his professional career as a whole though, there are a ton of thoughts or things that the enigmatic scorer could invoke within the thinker. One of the things that most stands out though is that when he is right and I mean all the way right, he can be a very prolific and high powered scorer.
That is practically how he landed his four year deal with the Miami Heat in the first place. In his first year with the Heat, the 2016-17 season, Waiters averaged 15.8 points, 4.3 assists, and 3.3 rebounds on 42.4 percent shooting and 39.5 percent from three.
The rebounds and assists numbers were both career-high season averages, while the points were a tenth off of his career-high of 15.9 points that was set during his sophomore season. The overall shooting percentage during his first season with the Miami Heat was only second to that same sophomore season, while his percentage from three was his career-best by about three percentage points.
It isn’t a far cry to believe that he could once again reach or perhaps even surpass these numbers, but that would take a bit of fortune from a health perspective. That leads right into the bold prediction for Waiters in the 2019-20 season.
Dion Waiters will play in at least 70 games this season for the Miami Heat
In order for Waiters to achieve the same type of success that he did in his first year with the Heat, he must be on the floor. He has yet to play 50 games total in one season for the Heat since joining the team.
While the 70 game mark might seem a bit high for a guy that has only played 70 games in three out of eight possible years, there are signs of encouragement that this notion is based on. Saying that he had seen the social media criticism of his weight and that it was mostly due to not being able to do the things he usually does because of injury, he fired back at his critics in recent months with this post from his Instagram page.
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bz9dE23AdbN/?utm_source=ig_embed
Regardless of how you view the situation, if the Miami Heat want to achieve all that they possibly can this season, they will need a healthy, fit, and engaged Waiters for as many games as possible. He looks like he is aware of this fact as well and we hope he makes good on it. That is why this is his bold prediction for this season.