Dion Waiters Traded

Re: Welcome Dion Waiters

I believe my favorite part of his game tonight was defensively. He did a great job in the second half closing out on shooters and fighting over screens. Very good on-the-ball defender as well. He was projected to have that type of ability, but it takes a commitment to make it a reality. I think he's going to just keep becoming a better and better defender in this league.

Re: Welcome Dion Waiters

Len said:

I like Dions Swag during real NBA games. He seems like a gamer.

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Yep. Good point. He's definitely got that eye of the tiger type swag about him. He definitely doesn't look scared. I may be wrong, but every time he beat his chest after a big play you could see that glacier sized chip on his shoulder. I love that shit.

Re: Welcome Dion Waiters

D-Wreck said:

AC just said it, but he can't fall in love with the 3 ball. I'm ecstatic he made 2, but I don't want him shooting 5/game. Loved his game tonight though.

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He's a SG playing off of Kyrie. He's gonna be shooting plenty of 3s.

Re: Welcome Dion Waiters

WAiting for a few highly critical posters to eat crow in this thread..

anytime now.. since you'll had written him off by summer league/preseason and then he shoves his uh em, clutch shooting and solid D down your throats in his first legit game. I as just wondering how all that tastes? I bet a side of crow would be welcome now, so eat it.

PS it is just one game, I get it, but it is also his first legit NBA REGULAR SEASON game..

Soooo..On Dions' behalf I formally accept all your apologies..


PPS Pessimistic P's.O.S. and you all know who you are. :chuckles:

Re: Welcome Dion Waiters

SmknJoe7 said:

I thought he took exactly what the gave the D gave him. 5 may be a little bit of a high number, but tonight it didn't look "out of the flow" at all.

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I'd say 1 or 2 were forced, I remember one specifically. But you're right, it does need to be a part of his repertoire because it opens up the rest of his game.

tedginnjr said:

He's a SG playing off of Kyrie. He's gonna be shooting plenty of 3s.

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I'm ok with some, I hope it's not plenty. That's not his game.

Like I said, only 1 or 2 seemed forced tonight and the rest were just taking what he was given.

Re: Welcome Dion Waiters

Everyone relax.

Awesome debut by Dion tonight. He will have bad games. With the exception of rare guys like Kyrie or the 2003 draft studs(LBJ, Wade, Melo, Bosh), the most any fanbase should expect for out of a rookie is flashes of what they might be capable of once they know what they dont know and learn how to compete against pros every night for 82 games.

Dion definitely flashed a lot of the things that made Grant and Scott feel good about him as a future major piece on this team.

I'm not going to get to up about it(unless he gets near Kyrie level performance this year) and I'm certainly not going to get down on him when he has those inevitable bad games or bad stretches.

Re: Welcome Dion Waiters

[video=youtube_share;WbSvohBHSdo]http://youtu.be/WbSvohBHSdo[/video]

Re: Welcome Dion Waiters

Strong debut! Couldnt have asked for a better backcourt to start against and get your NBA legs under you. Not to mention being at home with the opening night crowd pushing you.

That was a BIG 3 that he shot with 6-7mins to go in the 4th. Probably changed the tide of the Wiz thinking they could steal this without their two best players.

If Im a coach and we are looking at tape for the next game, I tell him I want to see him move and give lanes better off the ball. Kyrie kills with the back doors, and Andy is pretty damn good at threading a needle. Dion could score off those very easily and let his jumper come once the D tries to adjust to him off the ball. He didnt have any movement at all off the ball. The lanes were there and I was watching him thinking that if he gave motion off the ball, it would keep the weak side big more honest so Kyrie isnt getting bodied so much once he beats his man.

After he got blocked like that by Okafur in the first half I was worried he would just sit back and shoot jumpers. It was encouraging to see that he is not a punk, and he went right back in there in the second half a few times.

I like that.

I dont understand that LONG stretch from 6 mins in 1st to 7 mins in 2nd where Byron went with Boobie, Sloan and Miles along with Kyrie. I thought Dion could have got some mins at the start of the 2nd and 4th. But thats on Scott.

Overall though, pretty impressive night for him. There will be an entirely different defensive team out there on Friday with Thibs Bulls. Looking forward to seeing how he guards Hamilton and if he moves off the ball.

Re: Welcome Dion Waiters

This goes out to all the Dion haters.

http://d-waiters.ytmnd.com/

Re: Welcome Dion Waiters

This is fun, but watch what you say. It's one game.

Re: Welcome Dion Waiters

I hate to be the devil's advocate, but Dion showed a lot of the same weaknesses he showed in the preseason. His jumper was falling and he played excellent D, but this was far from a complete game. He's still struggling to finish at the hoop and/or draw fouls against nba length. It's also hard to ignore his 0 assists to 3 turnovers, which is completely unacceptable for a guy who's supposed to be our second best distributor. I'm certainly not saying this was a bad game, but there's serious room for improvement here.

Re: Welcome Dion Waiters

Some guys use the preseason to learn. Its clear dion understands the difference between preseason and regular season.He still has plenty to build on from here

Re: Welcome Dion Waiters

RchfldCavRaised said:

Strong debut! Couldnt have asked for a better backcourt to start against and get your NBA legs under you. Not to mention being at home with the opening night crowd pushing you.

That was a BIG 3 that he shot with 6-7mins to go in the 4th. Probably changed the tide of the Wiz thinking they could steal this without their two best players.

If Im a coach and we are looking at tape for the next game, I tell him I want to see him move and give lanes better off the ball. Kyrie kills with the back doors, and Andy is pretty damn good at threading a needle. Dion could score off those very easily and let his jumper come once the D tries to adjust to him off the ball. He didnt have any movement at all off the ball. The lanes were there and I was watching him thinking that if he gave motion off the ball, it would keep the weak side big more honest so Kyrie isnt getting bodied so much once he beats his man.

After he got blocked like that by Okafur in the first half I was worried he would just sit back and shoot jumpers. It was encouraging to see that he is not a punk, and he went right back in there in the second half a few times.

I like that.

I dont understand that LONG stretch from 6 mins in 1st to 7 mins in 2nd where Byron went with Boobie, Sloan and Miles along with Kyrie. I thought Dion could have got some mins at the start of the 2nd and 4th. But thats on Scott.

Overall though, pretty impressive night for him. There will be an entirely different defensive team out there on Friday with Thibs Bulls. Looking forward to seeing how he guards Hamilton and if he moves off the ball.

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I saw the exact same things. The off ball movement and reading the lanes is the type of things that grow as you learn your new teammates and the way they see the floor. We've watched Andy and Kyrie for a long time, but he's new to their game. I think once he learns that there's 4-8 easy pts there per game, he'll be all over it.

Also thought that the rotation in the 2nd was really odd too. This bench is gonna struggle a lot and its gonna cost us a lot of games.

All in all, it's great to see Dion with a legitimate shot at 20 without volume shooting, and see Kyrie still able to nearly break 30, Andy near a triple double and TT put up a solid double double. Looks like having room for Dions game might be less of a problem for this team than some may have thought.

Nobody needs to be serving any crow, but if this play keeps up from Dion on a consistent basis, I think all of us as Cavs fans can be happy to have him here end of the season.

Re: Welcome Dion Waiters

Nathan S said:

I hate to be the devil's advocate, but Dion showed a lot of the same weaknesses he showed in the preseason. His jumper was falling and he played excellent D, but this was far from a complete game. He's still struggling to finish at the hoop and/or draw fouls against nba length. It's also hard to ignore his 0 assists to 3 turnovers, which is completely unacceptable for a guy who's supposed to be our second best distributor. I'm certainly not saying this was a bad game, but there's serious room for improvement here.

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The three turnovers were irrelevant (seriously, did you watch the game or just look at a box score?). One was a jump ball with one second left and I don't even remember the other two. As for assists, our front court had 14 assists so it was just a wacky game in that respect. I did see him driving and dishing on a few occasions so his play-making abilities looked fine. For a guy who came in on his first rookie game and played the way he did, at both ends of the court, you really got to be hating to be critical about him in that game.

Re: Welcome Dion Waiters

Chris said:

This is fun, but watch what you say. It's one game.

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Yea, it's one game. But there are many of us who have been cautiously optimistic about Dion this whole time and had to put up with all the pessimists around here calling Dion a bust before he even played his first real NBA game. Well he finally played his first real NBA game and it is clear the kid can ball. Not saying he will be great or anything, but the potential is there. Everyone who called him a bust is a damn fool. You can't judge a player before they've even played a single real game.