Dion Waiters’ “Bad Attitude” Will Save Thunder’s Season

He sits there, wearing nothing but a towel, completely lacking in self-consciousness. As he leans back into his locker in a room full of teammates and perfect strangers, the thin layer of terry cloth separating him from the rest of us means absolutely nothing. It could carelessly fall off and I’d be surprised if he even noticed.

He is fearlessness personified, “Don’t Give a F**k” made incarnate.

He is Dion Waiters, and he might just be the key to saving the season for the Oklahoma City Thunder.

***

Look up Waiters’ name and the word “attitude” on any search engine and you’ll get dozens of different results. We’d all heard the stories from his first two-and-a-half years in Cleveland – the staggering confidence, the constant affirmations from him that he’s the best player on the court – and you chalk it up as overblown, only a short paragraph of Waiters’ life story.

But after just one meeting you get the sense it could be the only word filling every page, bold block letters written in ink made from the ground asphalt of Philadelphia streets.

You can’t ignore the influence his hometown helped in defining him, as he explains in this interview from his rookie season:

"Just the environment itself, it gives you that anger, that confidence, that swagger, everything you see in us in Philly. The basketball game, as far as outside: physical, falls, fights, a lot of profanity back and forth toward each other. Making each other better, though, that’s how it was back in the day."

The swagger, though, has its pratfalls as Thunder fans have already discovered. His first game with OKC after the trade with the Cavaliers was a rough introduction – four points on 1-of-9 shooting, to go with two rebounds and even one assist! – like meeting your daughter’s new boyfriend while he’s still wearing his orange jumpsuit from the County Jail.

Still, you could dismiss the performance as having to get acclimated to his new teammates (it couldn’t be jitters. Dion don’t get no jitters…) and, sure enough, he bounces back in his second game with the Thunder by producing 15 points in a winning effort. He chips in totals of 16, 21, and 16 in the next three games and you start to wonder if Cleveland’s new GM – he of the receding hairline and four MVP trophies – has any idea what he’s doing.

That second 16-point performance was the pinnacle of his short tenure in Oklahoma City, part of a historic shooting night when the Thunder scored 127 points in a rout of the Orlando Magic. OKC set a franchise-record by shooting nearly 73 percent in the first half of the game and Dion’s 7-of-9 field-goal rate was a big factor.

In the locker room afterwards, Waiters was magnetic.

He’s a sharp contrast to Kevin Durant, who is as polite as he is soft-spoken. He makes a point of making eye contact with media when answering their questions but he doesn’t offer much of value. He gives the standard, “We hope to build off this win” statement but, after a complete dismantling of the Magic it feels a bit disingenuous given there’s nowhere else to go from here.

There’s hope you’ll get something from Russell Westbrook, who had his most recent media flare-up just days earlier and, while he’s usually the Thunder’s “go-to” quote, there’s a sense of trepidation when talking to him. The team’s PR staff understandably handles him with kid gloves – he’s the last person to speak to reporters. Westbrook has likely been coached up on how to prepare for the media swarm or perhaps he’s simply in a good mood; it’s surprisingly hard to tell. He delivers his short, to-the-point responses while ignoring Steven Adams’ attempts to goad him by yelling out in his New Zealand accent, “Russ, tell him how we executed!”

And then there’s Dion, now (thankfully) dressed and joking with teammates and media alike as the Patriots’ blowout in the NFL playoffs adds to the din of the locker room.

Waiters mumbles a bit as he speaks to reporters but he’s smiling for most of the interview. He seems comfortable with his new teammates and where he’s at now; he alludes to this when he says he can “just play my game” and he doesn’t have “to look over my shoulder.”

Clearly, the situation in Cleveland was as unpleasant as it’s been reported to be.

He drops in an answer about being the “total package,” capable of defending and passing just as well as he scores. It’s said with tongue placed firmly in cheek – Waiters knows his reputation as a score-first, last and always player – but you get the feeling that he envisions himself capable of being part Magic Johnson and part Dennis Rodman. There isn’t anything he feels he can’t do.

He chuckles when explaining part of his happiness comes from being able to just “touch the ball,” implying that with LeBron James and Kyrie Irving facilitating the Cavaliers’ offense, Waiters was left out in the cold. It’s a harsh assessment but Waiters is nothing if not honest, sometimes brutally so.

There’s little shock, however, when that particular myth is debunked just days later. As CBS Sports’ Zach Harper points out:

"It’s not just a matter of touching the ball more either. His usage rate was 24.0 percent in Cleveland this season and it’s only ticked up to 24.1 percent in OKC. But his efficiency with the Thunder is far superior and he already looks to be a better player than we saw before."

And therein lies the nature of Waiters’ attitude problem and why his new Thunder teammates would be served by adopting the same mentality.

***

No less than six different pieces on Waiters are published the day after the Magic game. In a game when Durant scored 21 points in his customarily-effective fashion or when Westbrook was getting attention for all the wrong reasons, everyone wanted to write about Dion.

That’s part of what makes Waiters, as Harper states, a “bit of a polarizing prospect.” You can’t always take what he says or does at face value because, as he was in the case of his use in OKC’s offense, simply wrong. But there’s that magnetism at work again, as you’re likely to give him the benefit of the doubt – even as you’re getting burned by doing so – because he believes in what he’s saying.

And it’s that belief in the face of all adversity that the Thunder have lacked this season and throughout their tenure in Oklahoma City.

It’s a team forever living in the shadows – of their existence as the Seattle Supersonics, of being in a football town in America’s heartland, of the repercussions of the James Harden trade – and still trapped in a darkness of their own making.

They’re stuck with the feeling that they’re still a young franchise learning the ropes, even as a banner of the Sonics 1978 championship hangs inexplicably from the Chesapeake Energy Arena rafters.

The Thunder fight the mentality of Oklahoman’s many collegiate allegiances, relatively-new fans of the NBA who live and die with each regular-season loss. A defeat by the San Antonio Spurs on a Tuesday in February doesn’t have the same impact as a loss to Texas on a Saturday in November; it’s a fact of life for longtime fans of professional basketball but still hard to swallow for some Thunder fans.

And then there’s Harden, the lingering ghost of lost championship opportunities, moans of “What if?” breaking the silence through a long, scraggly beard. Even when you think that particular body will remain buried in memory, it’s unearthed again when the team’s front office refuses to let Waiters wear Harden’s old jersey number.

So what’s the only remedy? Waiters’ causal indifference, finally pulling the team into the light.

The shadows of yesteryear are erased for the Thunder with Waiters’ live-in-the-now approach. You don’t worry so much about Seattle and Harden or anything else when you’re just looking to get yours, whatever that might be. In OKC’s case, it’s the title that’s eluded them which is, of course, their goal anyway.

For Oklahoma City’s superstars, Waiters is like the coyote in Native American legend, both wise fool and cautionary tale. To Durant, a little bit of “Dion-ness” could loosen up a player who’s been accused of being joyless and, ridiculously, scared of the moment. For Westbrook, whose inefficient offense underscores his otherworldly-athleticism, Waiters is an example of what can happen when that goes too far.

And for the whole team, from the front office to the fans, Waiters’ short memory of his mistakes – of which there are sadly too many, including this latest botched fast-break layup – is a crucial step toward completely embracing this team, warts and all. The losses will continue to mount and they may keep the Thunder out of the playoffs as time runs out on the regular season.  But moving past them and simply “playing your game” will likely translate to winning basketball when you have as talented a roster as Oklahoma City’s.

On a team like Cleveland that has been under the most intense media scrutiny, Waiters no longer fits. His relationships when there was no pressure to win were too fractured; the team adopted a new approach to basketball but Waiters can’t be anyone else but who he is.

With the Oklahoma City Thunder, Dion has been welcomed with open arms. Like the Cavaliers, there’s also a pressure to win now. But the third-year guard’s cocky sureness is a welcome release for a team that seems to question itself constantly.

Waiters’ attitude isn’t a problem anymore – it’s more refreshing than anyone expected. And it could be what allows them to casually slip into the playoffs and finally win that title, giving zero f**ks along the way.