Dion Waiters Doesn't Want To Be "Catch & Shoot" Guy, Demoted To Bench Role

When the Cleveland Cavaliers brought in LeBron James and Kevin Love this offseason, some players knew they were going to have to change their games to play efficiently together.

For shooting guard Dion Waiters, that has meant becoming mostly a spot-up shooter. However, according the to Akron Beacon Journal, he's less than thrilled about the role:

It has been made clear to me in recent days by Cavs deep thinkers they’d like Waiters to really concentrate on two areas: defending like crazy and shooting catch-and-shoot 3-pointers. Waiters’ catch-and-shoot numbers last season were much better than I would’ve predicted: He made 42 percent of his catch-and-shoot 3-point attempts last season (72-for-173). That ranked 35th in the league (minimum 100 attempts), which was higher than Kevin Love (40 percent) and [Kyrie] Irving (32 percent).

So when Waiters stayed behind after the team’s morning shootaround Tuesday and worked out for another 40 minutes, after the bus and rest of the players were long gone, it wasn’t surprising to watch him working primarily on catch-and-shoot 3-pointers. Yet when I asked him about focusing on that this season, he dismissed it.

“That’s not my game,” he said. “I can do it, but you know what I’m effective at: pick-and-roll and things like that.”

Waiters was demoted to the bench in Wednesday night's loss to the Utah Jazz, which may have had something to do with his unwillingness to change his game.

Another reason for the demotion may have been head coach David Blatt wanting Waiters to provide a scoring spark for what has been one of the worst bench units in the league so far this season.

Waiters is averaging just 7.5 points per game so far this year.

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