The forgotten man: SDSU’s Reese Dixon-Waters has new name, number and mindset

He went by Reese Waters two seasons ago, was listed at 6-foot-6 and wore No. 14.

This year: Reese Dixon-Waters, 6-5 and No. 39.

Same player, different person.

He has “shrunk” an inch as San Diego State, unlike most college programs, is listing players by their more accurate heights. But he hasn’t shrunk from the most difficult year of his career and of his life, having his refuge, “that escape,” ripped away by a stress fracture in the navicular bone of his right foot … take … forever … to … heal. The one-year anniversary of feeling a sharp pain and being shut down from practice was Wednesday.

It tested him as a player and as a man. He got through to the other side, healthy at last and, he believes, better for it.

“It most definitely was the toughest time in my life,” Dixon-Waters said in a candid and introspective conversation after a recent practice, “because I didn’t know how to manage not being able to do the one thing where I get on the court, I don’t have to worry about anything. Everything in my personal life just started crumbling down. It was tough because I didn’t have that escape.

“I love basketball dearly. If I went out on the basketball court and that was it for me, that would be perfectly fine with me. I don’t play for the money or fame. I don’t play for any of that. If it was free, I’d still play.”

In many ways, Dixon-Waters is the forgotten man in the excitement and expectation swirling around this edition of the Aztecs. A year ago, the USC transfer guard was the only SDSU player on the Mountain West preseason all-conference team.

Now, no one is talking about him. The attention has shifted to the return of NBA prospects Miles Byrd and Magoon Gwath.

But this team may only go as far as Dixon-Waters takes it. When healthy two years ago, he provided a perimeter yin to Jaedon LeDee’s interior yang. He was the best player on the floor in a signature 84-74 win at Gonzaga, scoring 22 points on 8-of-11 shooting. He averaged 14.3 points on 45.1% shooting behind the arc in nonconference play before tailing off during the Mountain West schedule, partly from a nagging ankle injury that he stubbornly played through.

“He’s getting better,” SDSU coach Brian Dutcher said. “You miss a whole year, your game timing is off. He’s getting in shape, he’s moving well, but he was out of rhythm. Now it appears he’s regaining his rhythm, and that just comes through playing.

“He’s a sixth-year senior. He plays like a vet. He knows what we want. He’s always in the right place. He’s proven to be a good leader on and off the floor. Now, hopefully, he’ll stay healthy and have the kind of season we wanted from him a year ago.”

The body has healed. The mind has, too.

Dixon-Waters admits it: “I was selfish.”

It’s an odd statement from a guy who, scarred as a child when an NBA player waved off a request for his sneakers, automatically surrenders his shoes any time a kid asks at Viejas Arena. Last season, that meant rolling on his scooter to the locker room, changing sneakers and then rolling back on the floor, one arm steering the scooter, the other carrying the shoes. He ran out of shoes at midseason and had to sheepishly ask the equipment staff for more.

“People have told me they don’t think I should do it,” Dixon-Waters said. “I don’t look at it like that. If there’s a kid who came to the game and his parents don’t have a lot and this is a core memory for him, I’m not going to ruin it and be like, ‘Nah.’

“I’ve seen players do that. If that’s how you live, it is what it is. But I don’t live my life like that. I’m a pretty giving person.”

He kept giving the shoes, just not himself. Already an introvert, he found himself withdrawing even further as one bone scan after another showed only modest healing and his chances of playing in 2024-25 increasingly slipped away. He ordered Lego kits and built an F1 racing car by himself in the solitude of his apartment. He pushed away loved ones, not wanting them to see him broken.

“I wouldn’t handle it like that now,” he says. “I just stopped opening up to people. To be honest, it ruined a lot of the relationships I had with people I was close with. I just didn’t feel like I was doing anything (productive).

“I don’t feel I was happy and showing joy enough for the situation I was in. A lot of people would die to be in the situation I was in. I’d go home and, not be pouty, but just living life like, ‘It is what it is.’ I wasn’t living life like this is a great life. Yeah, I still gave shoes away, but I wasn’t helping other people feel good. I was always worried about myself.”

The hyphenated last name and new jersey number, then, represent an exorcism of those demons.

He went by Dixon-Waters in high school and at USC before dropping the Dixon at SDSU. The name was his biological father’s.

After some soul-searching, Dixon-Waters decided to add back his father’s name.

“Obviously, my biological dad is not in my life,” he says. “Now it doesn’t bother me. I’m over it, really, within the past year. I feel a lot of people run away from those situations, things that maybe are attached to them that they don’t want anymore.

“I felt like even though I don’t particularly respect him or like him, he is technically my biological dad and he brought me into this world. So I’m not going to be ignorant to that and take that out of my name. Because that’s who I am and that’s part of my story.”

He wore No. 2 at St. Bernard High in Los Angeles and in his last two years at USC, then 14 at SDSU because 2 wasn’t available. It’s available now. He chose 39 instead, a nod to his 3939 street address when he was a teenager, when he first fell in love with basketball, when life had fewer complications.

This is his sixth year of college basketball. Dixon-Waters enrolled at USC for the spring semester of the abbreviated 2020-21 pandemic season, then played two more for the Trojans and one for the Aztecs before a bone scan revealed what an X-ray and MRI did not.

He was a preseason all-conference selection last season. He isn’t expected to be when the Mountain West preseason awards are announced Oct. 23, a victim of recency bias.

The forgotten man.

“Does it bother me? As a competitor, yeah,” he says. “I also like it because I know what I’ve been working so hard for and what I’m capable of. When they see me, then they’ll know. People are like, ‘Oh, I forget he’s playing.’ That’s cool. I don’t live on social media. I don’t use Instagram or Twitter. People can say whatever.

“I’m just gonna play.”