Thunder acquire Dion Waiters: Five big questions

Before getting punked by the Warriors, the Thunder pulled off a stunner on Monday night, sending Lance Thomas to the Knicks and a future protected pick to the Cavs for wing gunner Dion Waiters.

Five big questions about the deal before we get to that embarrassment of a game:

1. Wait, wait. Dion Waiters? Is he good or bad?

Here’s the better question to ask yourself: Did the Thunder really just get Dion Waiters for Lance Thomas and a future protected pick? Why yes, yes they did.

How? Patience, planning and waiting for an opportunity.

Two teams are at crossroads, in different ways, and looking to offload talent to change culture and shake up their rosters. The Knicks want to dump J.R. Smith badly, and were willing to take back only non-guaranteed contracts and future assets to do it. The Cavs wanted new, veteran faces on their bench, and were willing to part with a talented young player to do it.

And the Thunder were just sitting there, with a non-guaranteed player on the roster, a trade exception, and plenty of picks to offer up. Waiters rookie deal pays him $4.062 million this season. The trade exception they created in the Thabo Sefolosha sign-and-trade? Worth $4.1 million. That’s why you make those moves. Fans grew frustrated as each one expired, but you don’t create them to use every time. You create them in order to be opportunistic, which the Thunder were here.

(Can I just say, salute to Lance Thomas. Ultimate professional, hard worker and as high a character player as you can get. Nope, he wasn’t all that good, but he stepped in when OKC needed something and played his butt off. We’ll always have those offensive rebounds against the Celtics.)

The question is, does Waiters help? Or could his penchant for wanting the ball and excess amounts of role get in the way?

At Syracuse, he became a lottery pick by playing a role wonderfully, coming off the bench to average 12.6 points in 24 minutes a game. In the NBA, though, he hasn’t been as receptive to that. He’s a player that likes his shots, and likes taking really bad ones. He’s incredible at making some of them, but his shot selection is certainly questionable.

He hasn’t been a very good catch and shoot guy this season, hitting just 27.2 percent from 2 and 25.4 percent from 3. He prefers pullups (31.6 percent of his shots are that) and does do well at getting inside 10 feet and scoring. He’s at his best off one dribble (hitting 48.1 percent) but can certainly stop the ball hunting his own shot. He’s actually taken better shots than you might think this season, with just 15.5 percent of his attempts being closely contested.

He’s only an average defender, but he’s got that intangible kind of toughness you can be sure Scott Brooks will mention 5,000 times, and can handle the ball in the pick-and-roll. Yes, Waiters has been inconsistent and hilariously bad at times in Cleveland this season, but I’m not totally sure you can evaluate him entirely on that. He’s never meshed well with Kyrie Iriving, and went from cornerstone building block to fourth or fifth option after the Cavs’ summer shake-up. All that stuff doesn’t necessarily mean he’ll fit in OKC either, because if he butted heads with Irving, it’s completely possible he does the same with Jackson or Westbrook. The guy is a good offensive player, though, that hasn’t played very good offense this season.

The Thunder aren’t worried about the book on Waiters. They came away extremely impressed with him during USA Basketball this summer, seeing him as the kind of player that can excel in the right situation. The thing with scorers is they need the ball to shoot, and thereby, score. That doesn’t mean he won’t take terrible shots, but didn’t everyone want bench scoring? Well, Waiters provides that better than just about anything else that would’ve been available on the trade market.

I will say this, though: One thing that confuses me mildly about the deal is that Presti is really big on not compromising the roster in terms of redundant pieces. With what the Thunder have already, adding Waiters to the mix with Jackson, Morrow, Lamb, Jones and Roberson means minutes will be hard to come by for that group. Maybe the extra depth is a good thing, and competition encourages hard work, but at the same time, you don’t want players stepping on each other’s toes.

2. What does the rotation look like now?

That, is hard to really say. There are now five players working for bench minutes (Waiters, Morrow, Jackson, Lamb and Jones) in the backcourt. The Thunder’s starting 2-guard isn’t a high minute player, so that clears room for Scott Brooks to be flexible night to night, but still, that’s a lot to sort through.

What we know: Westbrook will play between 32 and 36 minutes. Durant will do the same. Serge Ibaka was get more than 30. Steven Adams and Kendrick Perkins will split roughly 40 minutes between them. And Roberson will get somewhere between 15 to 20. Morrow will probably get between 15 and 20, with Jackson fitting in around 25.

There are 240 minutes to be divvied up, and that’s about 200 of them right there. Waiters will almost assuredly step into the rotation in front of Lamb, and Jones has fit lately more as a backup to Durant to help bring down his minutes. I don’t think the starting five is changing, so most likely the rotation settles into a night to night thing. The question is: Can the Thunder play a three guard lineup of Westbrook, Jackson and Waiters? That’s a whole lot of backcourt hands wanting the ball right there.

3. What does this mean for Reggie Jackson?

Nothing changes in the interim, I think. Jackson is still the Thunder’s sixth man, and primary bench guy. But it means that a bench trio of Jackson, Waiters and Morrow gives the Thunder some serious pop.

Adding Waiters does provide new insurance against Jackson leaving this summer, giving the Thunder the ability to be much more selective in matching any offer sheet. Before, Jackson’s importance was obvious, a player to give the Thunder a third ball-handling option with Westbrook and Durant. And it meant that they might have to break over the budget in order to keep him.

Now, they can let Jackson walk in better conscience. It doesn’t mean they will, or anticipate that happening, but there is some new leverage. Around the league, the popular opinion was growing the Thunder were going to match almost anything short of a max on Jackson, but now, they can call everyone’s bluff and be fine walking away.

4. What does this mean for Jeremy Lamb?

Means he probably needs to invest in a few new suits, because he might be wearing them more often. Or possibly check out what his lease situation is in OKC, because he might need to be breaking it soon.

Lamb clearly has fallen out of favor with Scott Brooks, and with the addition of Waiters, he’s set to drop down another peg in the rotation. I wouldn’t say his career in OKC is done, but it does seem to be on life support.

5. Did the Thunder get better?

Isn’t this the only question you really need to ask? Unless you’re convinced Waiters is that much of a cancer, then there’s no way to see how they didn’t. They added a high quality scorer and someone that has proven he can excel in a bench role. They stayed young while doing it (Waiters is just 23) and didn’t give up anything of extreme value to do it.

Sure, a first round pick stings some, but two things about that: 1) It does have heavy protections on it and 2) the Thunder are a team that has built itself to be able to live a year without a first rounder. They have Josh Huestis — a player the organization is in love with — ready to step in down the line. They have Alex Abrines and Tibor Pleiss, two players that are still very much in the future mix. They have Mitch McGary, someone that still will likely see time this season. With all of that in place, they didn’t believe they needed to add more in the draft this season, and weren’t sure they would’ve had a roster spot anyway for a 2015 draft pick anyway.

The Thunder didn’t just go out and add for the sake of it. They picked a player with upside that keeps their entire core under the age of 26. They added scoring to their bench and talent to the roster. There are certainly worries about fit and personalities clashing, but this is where the Thunder trust their existing culture. Waiters makes them a better team, especially considering what they had to let go of to get him.

They are currently over the tax, and it’s a valid thing to ask if Waiters is worth that. But it stresses a known thing that many have ignored: The Thunder aren’t operating under a mandate to stay under the tax. It’s always been about maintaining the right flexibility and picking spots. They may get back under by the end of the season, or they may be willing to pay it this season. Either way, the Thunder feel they’ve added a quality piece that makes them a better team in the present, and future. And all it took was Lance Thomas.