Miami Heat: Dion Waiters’ return will only makes things more complicated

For the Miami Heat, Dion Waiters’ upcoming return to the floor will only make things more complicated for the team

For many teams, especially struggling ones, the return of an injured rotation player would be a breath of fresh air. However, for the Miami Heat, the return of Dion Waiters could be everything but that.

Even though Waiters helped this team go on a 30-11 run two years ago, and is the biggest reason why this team decided to bring back their current crew instead of blowing it all up, the Heat don’t have an identity at the moment. This team will look good one week and then look terrible the next.

They don’t have any stars on its roster, which is full of role players. That’s a big problem in the NBA, and is arguably the worst place for a franchise to be in. The Heat are not good enough to be a difference maker in the Eastern Conference, but also isn’t bad enough to land a real top 8 pick in the NBA Draft.

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It’s NBA Purgatory, and the Heat don’t have any relief in sight.

But adding Waiters is only going to make things all the more complicated. For one, he’s going to take someone’s minutes if he’s going to see the floor at all. As this team currently stands, they have way too many backcourt players on their roster.

For context, Wayne Ellington is having trouble seeing minutes for this team. In four of the team’s last six games, he hasn’t seen the floor. He’s been DNP-CD in those games. And while it’s easy to just speculate there’s an ulterior motive here, and that the team could be shopping him, what if that isn’t the case?

If Ellington can’t see the floor that means the team simply doesn’t have enough minutes for everyone to go around at the shooting guard position. To make matters worse, this is all with Goran Dragic having been in and out of the lineup pretty much all season long.

The team has Josh Richardson, Dwyane Wade and Tyler Johnson all seeing 25-plus minutes at the two-guard position, perhaps even some at the point guard position with the recent injury issues for Dragic.

Still, there aren’t many teams playing three shooting guards those types of minutes. Waiters would be a fourth, and I’m not sure that decision gets any easier for Erik Spoelstra, who is already being questioned with some of his most recent head-scratching rotation decisions.

The big question is what will the fallout be after Waiters’ return? Because, due to his contract and how valuable he’s been to this team in the recent past, you’d think that Spoelstra would want to see what Waiters looks like post-surgery.

That means that someone is losing minutes. Will he cut Richardson’s? Wades? Johnson’s? It’s almost impossible to guess, but there’s no question that it won’t be an easy thing to navigate, even for one of the better head coaches in the NBA.

The return of Dion Waiters could be awkward for the Miami Heat. And after numerous missteps over the last couple of off-seasons, I don’t have any faith that they’ll navigate through this successfully.