OKC Thunder: Ranking the 7 worst starters of the Russell Westbrook era
By Rylan Stiles
Number 4: Dion Waiters
The OKC Thunder fanbase rallied around Dion Waiters in a big way during his time in Bricktown. The eight-year veteran, who eventually captured an NBA Championship during the 2020 season, ended up with Oklahoma City during the 2014-15 season before playing the entire 2015-16 campaign in OKC.
In January of 2015, Waiters was shipped from Cleveland to OKC as part of a three-team trade that saw the Thunder part with Lance Thomas, a first-round pick in 2016 (Furkan Korkmaz), to net Waiters, and saw Cleveland land Iman Shumpert and J.R. Smith to eventually lift them to a Championship.
Dion Waiters was fearless on the court; he provided some perimeter shooting for an era of Thunder basketball that severely lacked in that area and even had a massive playoff series in 2016 against the Dallas Mavericks, where he averaged 11 points, three rebounds, and two assists per game while shooting 40 percent from beyond the arc, and did not miss a free throw during the five-game series.
To show how good the OKC Thunder were in this era of basketball, Waiters holds the fourth worst win shares season of any player to start at least 18 games. In 2014-15, Waiters turned in 0.7 win shares while playing in 40 games, making 27 starts. He averaged 12.7 points, three rebounds, two assists, and 1.2 STOCKs per game while turning in shooting splits of 39/32/62 to land him on this list.