Dion Waiters has opened up on his troubled start to the season after finding a new home with the Los Angeles Lakers.
The guard started the season with the Miami Heat, who handed him multiple suspensions for various actions, most infamously that overdose on the team plane. Waiters is said to have ingested a gummy during a flight and suffered a seizure when woken up; subsequent reports claimed it was a panic attack.
Writing in the Players Tribune this week, the Philadelphia native took responsibility for the incident but denied having suffered a seizure.
“I go through depression, just like you. I go through anxiety, just like you. This last year and a half, I done been through it,” Waiters wrote.
“For me, depression is fake happiness. You lie to yourself. You hide things. You’re saying it’s all good — to your homies, to your family, to yourself. But it’s a lie. You don’t want to touch your phone. You don’t want to read what anybody is saying about you. Your body literally feels different. You’re just not you. Don’t matter how hard you are. Hard got nothing to do with it.
“The plane incident in Miami? It’s on me. I own that. It was idiotic on my behalf — point-blank, period. What’s crazy is, my whole life I been a leader. I’m not a follower. Pat knows me. He knows I don’t do drugs. But sometimes when you’re going through dark times, you can fall trap to things you’d never do in your right mind.
“I never had a seizure, though. Ask the doctors. Ask my Heat teammates. They can speak on it. For that b.s. to come out, it ain’t right.”
The 28-year-old was unsurprisingly traded in February, moving to the Memphis Grizzlies, who waived him before he was picked up by the Lakers. Unfortunately, he hasn’t really had the opportunity to prove himself in L.A as the season has been suspended since March 11 with very little insight into when things might resume.
