Kyrie Irving and Dion Waiters were supposed to be the backcourt of the future when they were together in Cleveland. Kyrie always lived up to his end of the bargain, but that wasn’t always the case for Waiters. He was eventually shipped to OKC not longer after LeBron came back to town.
In OKC, he played some key minutes off the bench down the stretch in the playoffs, but he often times resembled the second coming of Lance Stephenson. He was a restricted free agent and is signing with the Miami Heat for a surprisingly not-so-lucrative 2-year contract. He declined his $6.7M qualifying offer in OKC, thinking the big free agent dollars would be coming, but they never came.
A free-agency period that began with the Heat’s failed effort to land Waiters’ former Thunder teammate Kevin Durant led Oklahoma City to recently rescind their qualifying offer to Waiters. The Heat then swooped in Monday with their lone chip remaining to put into play in free agency, the $2.9 million salary-cap exception granted to teams that had previously utilized salary-cap space to fill out their roster.
H/T: Sun Sentinel
