It just appears that the staff decided they have better options going forward and needed the ship.
It just appears to you you mean. It's certainly not evident. Dixon was player of the year as a senior in HS and rookie of the year as a freshman and after coming to think of himself as the man became an afterthought at St John's - he's fallen from 6th to 8th or 9th on the depth chart, was getting no minutes recently, and was being recruited over for next year. So he bailed. Not to mention that it just appears that it would be the height of stupid for the staff to risk upsetting team chemistry in this critical year after this promising start by throwing one of the players off the team for no reason.
Hopefully MD fares better than other recent transfers who thought they were better than they are and deserved a bigger role. Malik Ellison (8 ppg, 3 rbs) isn't even starting at Pitt; RenardBuysHouses is playing 10 minutes less per game at TT than at SJ; Sima floundered at OSU and Yawke is still awful despite being mentored by the greatest coach of his generation, Danny Hurley. And meanwhile Clark, Simon, Heron and LJF are thriving.