The Case for Saint Weirdo

One of the more divisive topics here at CtB, is former writer Colin McGowan’s brilliant article on Pete Beatty’s anagram nickname of “Saint Weirdo” for Dion Waiters. If you aren’t familiar with anagrams, it’s a word play that dates back to Moses, in which you rearrange the letters of a word or phrase to produce a new word or phrase using all of the letters exactly once. The goal of a skilled anagrammatist is to produce an anagram that reflects upon the subject-Saint Weirdo achieves that on multiple levels.

The primary reason I dig anagrams is that my absolute favorite horror movie Rosemary’s Baby employs one. Like most films that I’ve become fixated upon, the backstory behind the making of the picture is as compelling as the film itself. How in Gehenna has Hollyweird not made a flick on the backstory of Rosemary’s Baby? The film saved Paramount Pictures, and cemented producer Robert Evans’ induction in the player hall of game. Mia Farrow’s performance as Rosemary propelled her to superstardom, and ended her marriage to Frank fricken Sinatra. To top it off, the genius of Roman Polanski’s direction led to Polanski being commissioned to direct and adapt the script of The Day of the Dolphin for the big screen. While Polanski was searching for filming locations in London, his wife Sharon Tate was murdered under Charles Manson’s order of “make it look witchy“. The gore of 10050 Cielo Drive ended the age of love of the 60’s and Rosemary’s Baby fittingly ends with Rosemary giving birth to Satan’s baby due to Roman Castevet’s Steven Marcato’s witchcraft. Rosemary’s Baby rocks. Anagrams rock. Saint Weirdo rocks.

saint
[seynt] noun – 2. a person of great holiness, virtue, or benevolence.

There’s virtue in Dion to me. The penitence and contrition he expressed after Chris Grant was fired, is rarely shown by a professional athletes. He totally owned that he was one of the reasons Grant was fired. That NEVER happens in sports. In the two games following Grant’s dismissal, Waiters posted averages of 21 points, 5.5 rebounds and 3.5 assists as atonement for his struggles and attitude distractions. No mainstay from last season’s Cavaliers team has had his role altered more with the additions of superstars LeBron James and Kevin Love than Dion and he’s taking it in stride. The chip on his shoulder has been smoothed down, and for the first time in his career, rather than kicking and screaming about being a member of the second unit, he’s welcoming a role as the sixth man off the bench.

Dion is also what I want in an NBA player as a person. He couldn’t care less about his brand or how much carbonated high fructose corn syrup water he can poison children with. His baby son is his twitter profile picture. He’s a doting father, in a league with notorious trails of abandoned children. He wants to be the father he didn’t have. He wants to be an inspiration for his son, the way his mother was for him. Off the court, I think he’s one of the better players in the league, Rémy Martin Marco Polo pool parties aside.

weirdo
[weer-doh] noun – 1. an odd, eccentric, or unconventional person.

First off, there’s nothing wrong with being called a weirdo. Einstein was a weirdo. Tesla was a weirdo. Larry David is a big time weirdo. Temperance prudes weren’t weirdos. Barbara Bush isn’t a weirdo. The Leno audience weren’t weirdos. Weirdos are the ones who create the quotes that the boring folks regurgitate at the water cooler because they are too uninteresting to come up with something original themselves. Weirdos don’t need Hallmark cards to express what they want to say, emotion flows out of them. Weirdos don’t need to employ a grumpy cat meme to tell a joke. Weirdos make the monotony of life tolerable.

The other nicknames thrown out for Dion are weaker than the Vietnamese đồng exchange rate. Neon is Deion Sanders’ secondary nickname. Waiters deserves a unique moniker that encompasses his personality rather than a hand-me-down of a former prime time player who turned skirt when his estranged wife bit him. Waiters can drive to the rim at will, but doesn’t. That’s unconventional. On many of his drives he could throw his chiseled frame into contact to draw the foul a la Wade, but doesn’t. That’s odd. Dion Waiters IS Saint Weirdo. Not only do I find the moniker fitting, but it’s ours. No one else calls him that. It’s something only the folks in this irrational field of uber fan-dumb in the cloud get to share.

Like Colin, Dion became my favorite Cavalier almost instantly. When I flew to the 216 for my yearly Mancation Cleveland trip in 2013, I didn’t buy a Kyrie Irving throwback jersey. I bought a Waiters one, knowing he had an infinitely greater chance of being dealt than Kyrie. I knew when I dropped the equivalent of 2,155,350 đồngs on that polyester tank top that it could easily become the newest burial in my Cleveland sports jersey graveyard in the basement, and I still went with it. I like Dion that much. I like that he can’t wash the South Philly grit off, because it’s in him. I like that there’s a civil war of emotion within him, and sometimes it boils over and his facial gestures grow so extreme that he could fit on an Italian opera stage without notice. As great as LeBron, Love and Kyrie are on the court, they couldn’t be bothered spending the amount of time connecting with their fans the way Waiters does off of it.

If this team reaches its ceiling they need Dion for the roles that he contributes, that no one else on the roster can. For all of the selfish lampoons that have been thrown his way, he’s the first player on the roster to defend one of his teammates if they take a hard foul. When Dion took a cheap shot from the Nuggets’ Darrell Arthur a month ago, I was livid that no one stood up for him. Every team needs a guy who’s ready to fight for his teammates. Not only is he the enforcer, but he’s also provides irrational confidence off the bench that few can match. He can go for 30 off the bench. He can produce offense when the stars struggle or are injured. As we’ve seen over the past few weeks, injuries are going to happen. Dion’s offensive potential is needed. Defensively he’s been on a tear. He’s averaging 2 steals per game over his past 10 contests.

Maybe all of this is just a defense mechanism because I don’t want to see Waiters traded for a backup center like Kousta Koufos. I’m not ready for the Saint Weirdo experience to end. He’s finally accepting his destiny of being a sixth man. He’s finally engaged defensively. With his confidence, quickness and skill, he could become a Steven Marcato-level witch for opposing teams to deal with in the future. I want to see his maturation fully bloom here. When the Cavs win a title, I want to write about Saint Weirdo drilling heat check threes and flexing for a jubilant crowd at The Q. I want to write about the grin on Saint Weirdo’s face as he holds his son on the championship parade float past the river of fire, as thousands of grown men cry together before him. When Saint Weirdo sings a lullaby to his son after that emotionally exhausting parade, I want it to be sung in Cleveland.