Can Dion Waiters continue to play like this when Kyrie Irving returns?

Dion Waiters has been getting a lot of praise lately (see here and here), and he absolutely deserves it. In his last five games, all without Kyrie Irving, he's averaging 23.8 points and 6.4 assists per game, while shooting 47% from the floor.

You are probably thinking, Wow! That's great! You might even be thinking, Mayer, I bet you feel like an idiot for saying that the Cavs should trade him.

That is where you would be wrong.

I agree that his recent play has been outstanding. But, unfortunately, it is irrelevant to his future as a member of the Cavaliers.

My argument for trading Waiters was never about whether or not he could be a good NBA player. I think that he is a uniquely-talented basketball player. I love his game, and I would definitely want him on my team in almost every case.

In this case, however, this team needs to be built around Irving (I'm not going to waste any more time trying to explain why that's a true statement). And so it doesn't really matter that Waiters plays well when Irving is down with an injury. In order for him to have value to this team, he needs to be able to play well alongside Irving.

The good news is that Waiters has actually been playing pretty well since the All-Star break (53.6% true shooting in 12 games), not just in the last five games. So there were some signs that maybe he and Irving could co-exist (Waiters was coming off of the bench, though, so not a ton of their minutes overlapped).

I guess I'm just trying to qualify some of the enthusiasm that everyone seems to have right now. It's awesome that Waiters is playing so well, and I really do think he may have figured some things out.

But until he can figure out the last piece of the puzzle -- how to play with the franchise point guard -- this team still has a lot of question marks going forward.