- Dion Waiters and James Johnson both practiced with the Heat today, tweets Barry Jackson of The Miami Herald. However, only Johnson will travel to Atlanta with the team, as he has reached his conditioning targets while Waiters hasn’t, per Ira Winderman of The South Florida Sun Sentinel (Twitter link). Neither player has suited up for the club yet this season due to conditioning issues.
After he was suspended for the first game of the season and didn’t travel with the team over the weekend, Dion Waiters has been reinstated by the Heat, writes Ira Winderman of The South Florida Sun Sentinel.
However, according to Winderman, Waiters won’t be in uniform tonight for Miami’s game vs. the Hawks. He also didn’t participate in the Heat’s shootaround this morning, and wasn’t available to comment on the situation.
“He’ll be here tonight,” head coach Erik Spoelstra said, per Anthony Chiang and Barry Jackson of The Miami Herald. “He will work out [but] he will not be active tonight. Then we’ll take it from there. Enough has been said about it, and we’ll take it day by day.”
The situation remains an unusual one, with the Heat offering little insight on where things stand with Waiters and not making him available to the media to address the situation himself. Sources tell the Herald duo that Waiters openly complained about his playing time during Miami’s preseason finale and refused to do one of his required weighs-ins that week.
Waiters has a $1.2MM bonus in his contract for appearing in at least 70 games in a season, so it’s fair to assume that in addition to his previous complaints about his role, he’s also not thrilled about missing his fourth straight contest to open the year. The 27-year-old is healthy, but his conditioning may not be at the level the Heat expect.
The Heat are off to a solid start this season, winning two of their first three games despite being without star Jimmy Butler. If that success continues, the club presumably won’t be in any rush to get Waiters and fellow veteran James Johnson back into the rotation. Johnson will also remain inactive tonight due to conditioning issues, per Windmeran.
It’s possible that Waiters and Johnson will meet their conditioning requirements and be activated by the Heat soon, but this is a situation worth watching — both players still have two years remaining on their eight-figure contracts.
- It will interesting to see if the chemistry the Heat have forged thus far will be disrupted by the returns of Dion Waiters and James Johnson, Ira Winderman of the South Florida Sun Sentinel notes. The shooting of Waiters and defense of Johnson can still help the team, though it played with a sense of togetherness in a win over the Bucks on Saturday, Winderman adds. Both are signed through the 2020/21 season, though Johnson has a player option.
Hawks owner Tony Ressler has no regrets about trading Luka Doncic for Trae Young and would make the same decision again, relays Chris Kirschner of The Athletic. Atlanta shook up the 2018 draft by agreeing to a deal that enabled Dallas to move up to No. 3 and select the eventual Rookie of the Year. The Hawks received Young, who also looks like a star after a slow start, along with a 2019 pick that was used to add Cam Reddish.
“I have to be honest, but I didn’t think Luka would be this good,” said Ressler, who admitted to being nervous about the gamble. “I didn’t think Trae was going to be this good. They are both better than I expected. I think they’re both really special players and have a shot to be for a really long time if they stay focused. I think this trade is going to have a nice, long history of discussion. I wouldn’t completely, again, declare success or whether we won it or lost it today because I do think both teams have someone they can really help build around for years and years to come.”
The Hawks are in the third step of the plan that Ressler developed to build a title contender after purchasing the team in 2015. Step one was a $200MM renovation to State Farm Arena. Next came a new management team with Travis Schlenk as general manager and Lloyd Pierce, who had experienced rebuilding with the Sixers, as head coach.
“The third step, we don’t know when and we want to do it intelligently, but is spending the money that it will take to add greatness to what we hope is existing greatness,” Ressler explained. “That is how you become a contender.”
There’s more from the Southeast Division:
- Isaiah Thomas had a promising debut with the Wizards Saturday night, writes Chase Hughes of NBC Sports Washington. After missing his first four shots, Thomas finished with 16 points, five assists and three rebounds in 20 minutes. The performance offered hope that he can become productive again after two injury-plagued seasons.
- Years of early-morning workouts with his father helped prepare rookie Tyler Herro for the Heat culture, notes Lori Nickel of The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. When Herro was taken with the 13th pick in this year’s draft, he was ready for Miami’s emphasis on fitness and hard work. “We say it all the time: We’re not for everyone. You have to be the right kind of player,” coach Erik Spoelstra said. “So, for a young player you’re checking to see if there’s any kind of entitlement. And there’s zero with that kid. He has a whole lot to his game, because you can tell he’s put in a lot of hours and sweat equity behind the scenes when no one was watching. He’s extremely driven, very ambitious. We love that.”
- Even though the Magic are coming off a playoff season, outside shooting remains an area of concern, according to Josh Robbins of The Athletic.
As we relayed earlier today, Dion Waiters won’t travel with the Heat this weekend as he looks ahead to potentially making his season debut next Tuesday. However, he won’t be the only Miami veteran who is potentially away from the team on its road trip.
Head coach Erik Spoelstra said today that the Heat are planning to be without Jimmy Butler and James Johnson for Saturday’s game in Milwaukee and Sunday’s contest in Minnesota, per the team (Twitter link). Butler’s regular-season debut with Miami has been postponed due to the birth of his daughter, while Johnson is still working on his conditioning.
According to Ira Winderman of The South Florida Sun Sentinel (Twitter link), Udonis Haslem is also dealing with a wrist injury and won’t play on Saturday, so two-way players Daryl Macon and Chris Silva should both be active, joining the other 10 players on the Heat’s standard roster. Miami has one open spot on its roster but can’t currently fill it due to hard-cap limitations.
Dion Waiters served his team-mandated one-game suspension on Wednesday, but the veteran guard won’t rejoin the Heat until Monday, according to Ira Winderman of The South Florida Sun Sentinel. While Miami is scheduled to play road games against the Bucks on Saturday and Timberwolves on Sunday, Waiters will not accompany the club on that trip.
Waiters’ original one-game suspension was related to “conduct detrimental to the team,” according to the Heat. The 27-year-old was said to be upset about his role leading up to the season and had a disagreement on the bench with head coach Erik Spoelstra during Miami’s final preseason game, per The Miami Herald.
The club hasn’t offered any specific details on why Waiters will remain away from the team through the weekend. According to Winderman, the Heat guard will work on his conditioning in the interim.
It’s possible that Waiters will rejoin the Heat in advance of Tuesday’s game vs. the Hawks and things will move forward without incident from there, but this looks like a situation worth keeping an eye on — particularly if Waiters remains dissatisfied with coming off the bench. His trade value isn’t high right now, and – as Winderman wrote in a separate story – a buyout with two years left on his contract is unlikely, so it’s in both sides’ best interest to figure out how to make things work this season.
As Winderman observes, Waiters has a $1.2MM incentive available in his contract for appearing in at least 70 games this season. His suspension and his absence from the team this weekend will cost him three games, so he’ll have to play in 70 of the Heat’s final 79 contests to earn that bonus.
- ESPN’s Bobby Marks provides some financial details on the rookie scale extensions signed on Monday, outlining (via Twitter) exactly how much bonus money is included in five of those deals. Marks also identifies four players who will receive increased partial guarantees as a result of remaining under contract with their respective teams through Wednesday (Twitter link). Those players are Christian Wood (Pistons), Jordan McRae (Wizards), Kendrick Nunn (Heat), and Trey Burke (Sixers).
As of Monday’s roster cutdown deadline, no NBA team is carrying more than 17 players in total — 15 on standard contracts and two on two-way deals. However, not every team is making use of all 17 roster spots available to them.
Currently, a third of the league’s 30 teams have at least one open roster spot, either on their regular roster or in their two-way slots.
For most clubs, that decision is financially motivated — teams like the Magic and Nuggets are getting dangerously close to the tax line and prefer to avoid moving even closer by paying an extra player or two. The Thunder and Trail Blazers are already over the tax and won’t want to push their projected bills higher.
For teams like the Heat and Warriors, the decision not to carry a 15th man is dictated by the hard cap — neither club currently has sufficient room under the hard cap for more than 14 players.
Teams’ reasoning for retaining an open two-way spot is less clear. Those players earn very modest salaries and don’t count against the cap, so finances shouldn’t be a factor. Perhaps the teams with two-way openings are still considering their options before G League training camps begin next week, recognizing that any two-way player they sign now is unlikely to actually play for the NBA team this week.
Listed below, with the help of our roster counts breakdown, are the teams that aren’t carrying full rosters.
Teams with an open 15-man roster spot:
- Atlanta Hawks
- Cleveland Cavaliers
- Denver Nuggets
- Golden State Warriors
- Miami Heat
- Oklahoma City Thunder
- Orlando Magic
- Note: The Magic have two open roster spots, giving them two weeks to get to the required minimum of 14 players.
- Portland Trail Blazers
Teams with an open two-way slot:
- Brooklyn Nets
- Phoenix Suns
Dion Waiters and the Heat don’t appear to be on the same page right now. Waiters reportedly expressed displeasure with his role during the preseason, which prompted the team to suspend him for opening night, which in turn led to the veteran guard once again expressing his displeasure — this time on social media.
Given where things stand right now, it’s fair to wonder if the Heat will increase their efforts to move Waiters, who has been mentioned in multiple trade rumors over the last year. However, as Sean Deveney of Heavy.com writes, Waiters didn’t have much trade value before this week, and his suspension won’t exactly improve his stock.
“They’ve been trying to trade him since last Christmas,” one general manager said of the Heat guard. “No one was trying to take him on then. After this kind of thing, it would be really hard to take him on now. He has had this kind of junk attached to him just about his whole career.”
Waiters has a $12.1MM cap hit this season, with a $12.65MM guaranteed salary to follow in 2020/21, the final year of his deal. Moving that contract would likely cost the Heat at least one asset, and the team has already traded away many of its future draft picks.
- Ira Winderman of the Sun Sentinel provides additional details on Dion Waiters‘ suspension, including his decision to make some rather questionable posts on social media in wake of the announcement. The suspension stems from a heated conversation between Waiters and head coach Erik Spoelstra after Waiters played only 10 minutes in the Heat‘s final preseason game on Friday.