Dion Waiters is the latest member of the Miami Heat to be dealing with an injury. The shooting guard sustained a sprained left ankle early during Friday night’s win over the Dallas Mavericks, and it is unclear just how long the injury will keep him off the court.
According to Heat head coach Erik Spoelstra, there is currently no timetable for Waiters’ return.
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“We’ll evaluate him every day,” Spoelstra said. “He had an X-ray [Friday] night. He had an MRI [Saturday] morning. Both were negative.
“It is a sprained ankle. So he’ll have to go through our process of getting it better, getting it healthier, getting it stronger. And then we’ll go from there.”
While Waiters could return at any time, Spoelstra did not seem confident that he will be back by Miami’s upcoming game on Tuesday night.
“I don’t know. We’re not at that point right now,” he said. “It’s swollen. He’s dealing with pain. So we don’t have a timetable right now.
“We’ll just go through the process of trying to get his ankle feeling better and doing the rehab, doing the corrective exercises and then do the next step.”
What is perhaps most concerning regarding Waiters’ injury is that it is a potential aggravation of the injury that kept him out for the final 13 games of the 2016-17 season. Waiters ultimately decided to bypass surgery to repair the injured ankle this past offseason.
Despite the concern, Spoelstra seems confident that this latest injury is not related to Waiters’ previous issues with his left ankle.
“If you watched the film, he just rolled it,” he said. “It could happen with his right ankle. So it’s not related other than the fact that that ankle has given him some problems over his career, and that’s not unusual.
“When you sprain an ankle, sometimes you tend to do that one repeatedly.”
Waiters certainly wants to get back on the court as soon as possible to play alongside his teammates, but there’s also quite a bit of money on the line.
The 6-foot-4 guard signed a four-year, $52 million dollar contract this offseason. Within that contract is a $1 million bonus if Waiters were to play in at least 70 games this season. Saturday’s loss marked the third game in a row that Waiters has missed as a result of the ankle sprain, and he had missed two games back in November for the birth of his daughter.
The Heat welcomed James Johnson and Goran Dragic back to the court in Saturday night’s loss, but Waiters, Justise Winslow, and Hassan Whiteside are still on the road to recovery. Recent news regarding both Winslow’s and Whiteside’s recoveries have been promising, but it seems likely that it will still be quite some time before the Heat are fully healthy.
Despite their depleted roster, the Heat have won six of their last nine games. With five out of six upcoming games being home contests for the Heat, they will look to continue their winning ways and hope that their missing players are able to return to the court soon .
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