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New Orleans Pelicans Should Make A Trade For Dion Waiters

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By @KellanMiller

Dion Waiters

David Richard-USA TODAY Sports

Let me provide a preface here. In case you didn’t know, Dion Waiters is a shooting guard for the Cleveland Cavaliers. As soon as LeBron James announced this summer that he was returning home, and you were unfortunately inundated with a billion commercials and a trillion spins of P. Diddy’s “I’m Coming Home,” he became the don. To act as if we live in a world in which the Cavs organization makes decision without the good graces of King James is ludicrous. I imagine even the popcorn served at Cavs games is first taste-tested by James, at which point he decides whether the butter content is sufficient. Fairy tales make for fun bedtime stories, not serious basketball talk.

So a trade involving a Cavs player will no doubt come down to how James feels about the situation. Nonetheless, third year shooting guard Waiters’ name has surfaced in trade rumors recently, and it doesn’t appear that King James is opposed to the idea of trading him, unlike Tristan Thompson, who, for whatever reason, James has latched onto in a way that has the potential to erase all previous memes and kiss cam videos about the love affair between Dwayne Wade and James wholly forgettable.

When the Cavs drafted Waiters, they figured they were getting a perfect complement to the Kyrie Irving era team (the argument can be made that we are still in the Irving era, because never in the history of everdom has a point guard run so many iso, one-on-one when a player like James is available). Waiters got labeled with the infamous “bust” label way too early. In his rookie season, he averaged 14.7 PPG in only 28.8 MPG. In his second season, he averaged 15.9 PPG. He responded accordingly to unfair criticism towards the latter half of the 2013-14 season, particularly when Irving missed substantial time due to injury. If you missed the Rising Stars Challenge last season, you missed an insanely entertaining one-on-one battle between Waiters and Tim Hardaway Jr. With Kevin Durant and James Harden gleefully dancing with excitement on the sidelines, Waiters went on to score 31 points. Obviously, the Rising Stars Challenge isn’t a firm indicator of what a player can potentially do for a team, but it definitely proved that Waiters can add value to a team.

Not to question David Blatt and his system (let Irving do whatever he wants and hope it all works out), but I firmly believe the Cavs would fair a lot better if they were to incorporate Waiters more into the rotation. He is very effective on catch and shoot situations, a la Danny Green, Anthony Morrow or Channing Frye, which would benefit The New Orleans Pelicans well. The team has so many threats down low and on the perimeter (cough, Anthony Davis, cough) that bodies that temporarily leave the paint to defend Waiters will be creating a ton of space for the future MVP and company. If defenders decide to stay home and let Waiters have a go at it from behind the arc, hopefully they will be aware that the man had a 41.6 percent rate from downtime. Clearly, the odds favor the Pelicans.

The problem is that Waiters likes the ball in his hands — possibly too much. If a deal were to happen, and Monty Williams could convince him to adopt the Pelicans’ style of unselfish basketball, the upside is tremendous. If the Pelicans could get Waiters for a 2nd round pick and complementary backup player, they should pull the trigger immediately. It would give the Pelicans more depth and more opportunities to rack up easy points.

But like I said, King James will ultimately be the decision maker.

Kellan Miller is a writer for RantSports. Follow him on Twitter @KellanMiller, “like” him on Facebook, or add him on Google Plus.

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