The Miami Heat have suspended Dion Waiters once again for bad conduct, and it may be time to figure out a course of action for his future with the team.
Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but the Miami Heat have suspended Dion Waiters. Not one time, not two, but on Thursday night he was suspended for the third time this season just 24 games into the campaign.
This third suspension was for failure to adhere to team policies, violation of team rules and continued insubordination, according to Marc Stein (among others). He will be suspended until after December 23rd which is a span of six games, meaning he is a lock to miss at least the first 30 games of the season. Of course, he can likely expect to miss a lot more than that.
The Heat have suspended Dion Waiters again ... this time for continued insubordination pic.twitter.com/PmGxr681jY
— Marc Stein (@TheSteinLine) December 13, 2019
“Continued insubordination” is a major offense, and not an easy thing to come back from. That will certainly not only impact his standing with the Miami Heat organization (which is surely dismayed to the core with him), but with any other team who might otherwise be interested in acquiring him via trade.
Needless to say, any teams who may have considered making a trade for him before the season began have certainly reconsidered. He is due $24.7 million over the course of this season and next, and a player whose off-court attitude and behavior has completely played him into street clothes can’t get much less appealing.
So what are the Heat to do?
In order to trade him, it’s a certainty that they would need to attach assets. Trading away a future draft pick or a current youngster on the roster like KZ Okpala or Kendrick Nunn just to get Waiters out of the locker room seems counter-intuitive.
This most likely makes a trade seem like a non-starter.
That reality leaves a couple other options, none of which are especially appealing.
The Heat could choose to waive him and either utilize the stretch provision or not. Because the September 1st deadline has passed to count this year’s salary in the stretch provision, only the 2020-21 salary would actually get stretched. That means he would receive his full $12.1 million for this season, and then next season’s $12.65 would be stretched over that season and the following two years in three equal portions of $4.216 million.
Barring some unlikely legal recourse where the Heat are able to argue against having to pay Waiters the remainder of his contract, the final option may simply be to do nothing. That’s troubling because they can’t simply force him to stay home without his consent, and it likely won’t be easy to get that from either him or his representation (Rich Paul and Klutch Sports).
In Waiters’ three years with the Heat, he’s averaged just 40 games per season coming into 2019-20. Needless to say, that average is going to plummet by the time this year is over. The only question is what form that meteoric drop takes.