It really felt like Dion Waiters, after blocking Lou Williams twice and then hitting a three to bring the Heat within three with 30 seconds left, that we were going to see a vintage “Waiters Island” performance. The Clippers would mess up, the Heat would get the ball back, and Waiters would swing his huge cojones around right into Kawhi Leonard’s face with a triple from 40 feet away as time expired to send it into OT (where he would then score 10 of his team’s 12 points and steal the win while Paul George drafted plans to get traded to the Heat).
It didn’t end up working out that way at all (although I bet George really did talk to some of the Heat players after the game begging to have them trade for him), but if you only watch this video, you can pretend that it did really happen that way and that I’m just too lazy of a highlight-creator to show all the stuff that he did.
We’ve been waiting a long time for Waiters’ return to action, some of us eagerly (he still has a few scattered fans who had mostly gone into hiding), some of us not so eagerly. The tales of his exploits during the offseason and at the beginning of the season are enough to fill a novel. I had lost track of the amount of times he had been suspended, so thanks to the ESPN people for informing me: three times. I was actually fairly sure that he wasn’t ever going to play again for the Heat after he sorta dissed Spoelstra and some Heat players on social media, so this was a total surprise for me. Still not sure if it was a good one or not, but definitely a surprise.