This Is The Only Dion Waiters Quo—Wait A Second

Considering green-light incarnate Dion Waiters drained a pair of game-winners in the past week, it seems natural that the human heat check would be feeling himself a little bit. After putting both the Warriors and the Nets in the garbage and averaging 22.4 points over his last five games, the Miami Heat guard spoke with the media ahead of Wednesday’s home matchup with the Hawks, attributing his recent hot streak to his “ philly cheese swag.” He also dropped a very interesting quote about how he maintains his resolve to chuck up a shot every other possession:

Hmm. That’s definitely a quote that applies to how Waiters plays, it’s just not his quote. Rather, it’s something Kobe Bryant—Waiters’s spirit animal— reportedly told director Gotham Chopra over two years ago:

Gotham Chopra, the director of “Kobe Bryant’s Muse”, an upcoming documentary on Bryant, told a story about being with Kobe and watching the Nets and the Heat play. Recounts Chopra, “Deron Williams went like 0-for-9. I was like, ‘Can you believe Deron Williams went 0-9?’ Kobe was like, ‘I would go 0-for-30 before I would go 0-for-9. 0-for-9 means you beat yourself, you psyched yourself out of the game, because Deron Williams can get more shots in the game. The only reason is because you’ve just now lost confidence in yourself.’”

It would seem Waiters finally remembered that quote.