Yea, when you frame it that way.....
The Cavs didn't draft Waiters to be a nice little scoring guard off the bench. They drafted him because they believed he could be a dynamic play-maker next to Kyrie.
And with that, there are more impactful centers in the league than there are shooting guards. I've said this before, but it's much harder to find a real star at the SG position than it is at the center position.
For instance, if I ranked the top 10 SGs (real SGs) by PER from last season (minimum of 40 games played) the bottom of that list was Ray Allen at 14.78
On the flip side, if I ranked the top 10 Cs from last year using the same parameters, the bottom of that list was Larry Sanders (or Noah, depending on who you feel like calling a C) at 18.92. There were more impactful players at C than there were at SG last season.
The SG position has been watered down with the advent of scoring PG's.
As long as there is only 1 ball to go around the SG is marginalized if you have a PG more oriented toward being Allen Iverson on offense than John Stockton.
Not unlike how RB's in the NFL have been marginalized with the switch to a pass happy league. Having a star SG is about as important as having a star RB.
I don't know what they drafted Dion to be, but as long as Kyrie was on the team he wasn't ever going to be able to be a James Harden type scorer.
I think his roll the past few games is suiting him perfectly and he is playing as well as he has as a Cav.
I am not getting down on Dion as a player, just the idea that he was never going to be an elite scorer here as long as there is only 1 ball at a time and Kyrie is on the team.
I think ultimately he will be a 16-18 pt a night guy (18-20 in his peak seasons) with a few assists and rebounds a game like we are seeing.
That would make for a really solid NBA career, but that level of production can be bought for about $8-10 a year in free agency as there are always a few guys in that kind of range available.
Impactful centers on the other hand almost have to be taken in the draft, because there teams almost never let them hit the market unless it is a Bynum situation.
Remember the contract Hibbert got, he wasn't exactly putting up Shaq numbers, but there is such a premium on finding a functional center a team like Portland was willing to try and max him out.
It is why you have to take them in the draft, because otherwise you are left wildly overpaying for one or just not having one at all.
So while the spirit of your argument about the lack of SG's is right, scoring PG's and SF's have largely made them obsolete. The fact we were willing to pay Bynum $12 million a year with no knee cartilage should tell you about the importance of the posiition.
We would never do that with a SG, no matter who they were.
That should reinforce where centers stand as far as their value.