by By Keith Langlois
There were eight players and too many draft picks to count involved in the five-team trade headlined by Jimmy Butler going from Miami to Golden State and Dennis Schroder coming to the Pistons to plug the hole in their lineup created by Jaden Ivey’s season-ending injury.
Lindy Waters III had the lowest profile among those eight players and you could have been excused if you assumed the Pistons would waive him the next day to get back to the 15-man roster limit on the belief that he was only included in the deal for salary-cap considerations.
But Trajan Langdon emphatically cleared the air on that count on Feb. 8, the day after the dizzying trade had been completed.
“Lindy was a guy I liked. I saw him a lot when we were in the same division when I was in New Orleans and he was in Oklahoma City,” Langdon said. “So I got to see his growth. Got to see him a lot in pregame workouts. Their coaching staff, they really didn’t want to let me know who he was and what he was about, but I got to a determination of what a high-character human being and player he is.”
Waters fought his way into the NBA after going undrafted out of Oklahoma State in 2020, landing in an independent league the following winter before winning a spot in the G League via tryout in the fall of 2021. He graduated to the NBA on a two-way contract with the Thunder later that season and again in 2023 had his two-way deal converted to a standard contract. Waters had won a rotation spot with Golden State early in the 2024-25 season and played more minutes with the Warriors (655) in 38 games, including nine starts, than he had in either of his previous three seasons with Oklahoma City.
Here’s a look at Waters’ past, present and future:
PROFILE: 6-foot-6 wing, 27 years old, 4 NBA seasons
2024-25 STATS: 4.9 points and 2.1 rebounds in 52 games with nine starts, including 14 games with the Pistons in which Waters averaged 3.4 points and shot .394 from the 3-point arc in 8.8 minutes per game with an .864 3-point rate
STATUS: Waters is an unrestricted free agent with the Pistons holding his Bird rights
DID YOU KNOW?: A Native American, Waters was inducted into the North American Indigenous Athletics Hall of Fame in 2024. He is a member of the Kiowa Tribe of Oklahoma and the Cherokee Nation and in 2022 founded the Lindy Waters III Foundation, an organization dedicated to supporting Native American youth and Indigenous communities through sports, health and wellness.
A LOOK BACK: Waters was born in Colorado but moved to Norman, Okla., as a young child and was a multi-sport athlete who was high school teammates with Trae Young. He wound up playing basketball at Oklahoma State, turning down offers from Ivy League schools, and exhausted his eligibility in 2020 – one season before Cade Cunningham spent his lone college season in Stillwater. After going undrafted in 2020, Waters played in the neophyte The Basketball League with the Enid (Okla.) Outlaws in 2021 and then earned a spot with Oklahoma City’s G League affiliate, OKC Blue, for the 2021-22 season. That earned him a two-way contract with the Oklahoma City Thunder and eventually a standard contract in February 2023. In parts of three seasons with Oklahoma City, Waters appeared in 104 games with the Thunder and shot .377 from the 3-point line.
THE SEASON THAT WAS: Waters was traded during the 2024 NBA draft from Oklahoma City to Golden State and with the Warriors he carved out his most prominent role yet in the NBA. Waters played in 38 games, including nine starts, and averaged 17 minutes a game for Golden State, scoring 5.5 points per game. He was swept up in the five-team trade that centered around the Warriors acquiring Jimmy Butler from Miami at the February trade deadline, coming to the Pistons along with Dennis Schroder. Waters had limited opportunities with a Pistons team in the midst of a playoff push and with a set rotation that didn’t suffer any subtractions as the result of the trade that added Schroder and Waters. When called upon, Waters demonstrated his deep shooting range, athleticism and defensive disruptiveness. In the regular-season finale at Milwaukee, with both teams resting their key rotation players, Waters played 35 minutes and hit 6 of 16 shots – all from 3-point distance – in scoring 18 points, three off his season high of 21 that came on Oct. 29 in a Golden State win over New Orleans.
A LOOK AHEAD: Though Waters is an unrestricted free agent, the Pistons very well could look to bring him back to compete for wing minutes in 2025-26. Waters is springy, competitive defensively with a reported 6-foot-10 wingspan and has a quick release to go with his impressive shooting range. He’s a classic 3-and-D wing. The Pistons might not be able to retain all of their other key free agents – Malik Beasley, Tim Hardaway Jr. and Dennis Schroder – and Waters could be viewed as part of the solution should one get away. Waters’ skill set would most directly compare to Hardaway’s of that group. The Pistons will look for young wings Ausar Thompson and Ron Holland II to increase their roles and might have to allocate the primary share of their assets to retaining Beasley and his elite 3-point weapon, so it might shake out that Waters is brought back to provide wing depth and 3-point shooting. Buttressing that supposition are the words of Trajan Langdon at the trade deadline when he volunteered that Waters was more than a throw-in for salary purposes.
MONEY QUOTE: “Lindy is one of the hardest-working guys that I’ve been around. Look at his background, his story of how resilient he’s been to get here. The way that he had to climb every single day, every step of the way and you see a guy who deserves it. Unfortunately, we don’t have a lot of minutes at that spot, but he works his tail off every single day. He’s an NBA rotational player and he’s going to be prepared because there’s going to come a time when we need him and he’ll be prepared and ready to help us.” – J.B. Bickerstaff on Waters as the regular season wound down
(Via NBA.com)
