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The Miami Heat have fined Dion Waiters for publicly complaining about his lack of playing time this week. Waiters has appeared in five games, all off the bench, since returning to the Heat after missing more than a year with a left ankle injury. After the Heat's 124-86 loss to the Milwaukee Bucks on Tuesday night, Waiters loudly voiced his displeasure at how he was being used. "F--- patience. I want to play. I've been patient," he said after playing 12 minutes in the Heat's lopsided defeat. "I want to play. I've been patient long enough. What do I got to be patient for? Come on, man. I've been patient. I think everybody knows that. It's time. What are we waiting for? If I'm out there, play me." Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said Thursday that Waiters was fined an undisclosed amount and that the shooting guard's comments were "obviously not acceptable behavior," according to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. "I think it's important for him to realize: Our team is much different than when he left last year, and while his teammates are really here to support him, nobody is volunteering their rotation minutes to him. It'll have to be earned just like everybody else. These concepts of patience and surrendering to the team, whether we want to put expletives in front of it or behind it, those are going to be very important concepts for him to embrace, and I think he will," Spoelstra said, according to the Miami Herald. Waiters said Thursday his postgame comments were "a mistake but I can live with that because when you hold something in and it's bottled up, it can wear on you a little bit," according to the Herald. Waiters, in his third season with the Heat, is averaging 15.4 minutes per game in his five games this season and has per-game averages of 7 points, 2.2 assists and 2 rebounds. Last season the Heat fined Hassan Whiteside an undisclosed amount when he complained about his role in April.
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