The Miami Heat enter the 2019-20 season looking to bounce back from a disappointing campaign that saw them finish 10th in the East a year ago.
As such, they’ve retooled their roster a bit, most notably adding Jimmy Butler in a sign-and-trade with the Sixers for Josh Richardson and trading Hassan Whiteside to Portland for Meyers Leonard. There’s nothing the Heat organization takes more pride in than their culture and re-establishing that has been part of their offseason moves, adding a guy like Butler and shipping out Whiteside who had at times butted heads with Erik Spoelstra over his role.
On Saturday night, the Heat continued their quest in getting players to fall in line by issuing a suspension to Dion Waiters for conduct detrimental to the team, ruling him out for the season opener.
From the Heat on why Dion Waiters has been suspended. pic.twitter.com/nYj0glunXB
— Keith Smith (@KeithSmithNBA) October 20, 2019
Waiters has not been pleased with the bench role he’s been assigned this preseason. As we learned via Instagram comments from Waiters recently, he doesn’t appreciate being behind rookie Tyler Herro in the rotation and is apparently not the biggest fan of Spoelstra either, noting he would’ve won too if he had LeBron, Wade, and Bosh.
https://twitter.com/Brendan_Tobin/status/1185902848942452736
All of this is to say, things are not going well in Miami with Waiters and the Heat have to figure out a way to either reconcile with or move on from their disgruntled shooting guard. Waiters is owed north of $12 million per year over the next two seasons which will make it difficult to move him — especially with his injury history. Still, they may have to explore what their options are on the trade market for Waiters because its clear their vision for how he fits with this current team and his are pretty far apart and he’s not afraid to make that known.
