Deandre Ayton Discussion: This Is A Platform I Can't Run From

what's up with this guy?

meanwhile, mark williams is having a career year and dalton knecht is on mop up duty only.

 

^ tell me about it. I was so pissed at that "trade", still am.
As for DA, looks like he came down back to earth, plays with no fire... story of his career?

 

The optimistic take would be he's still banged up from that injury that caused him to miss some time a couple of weeks ago. The pessimistic take would be he's hearing the "he's not the long term guy" stuff coming from the fanbase and is mentally checking out, like he did at teams in Phoenix and Portland.

 

Ayton went from dominating 8/10 matchups against top flight bigs to becoming Casper out there.

Six 20+ point games in November and only one in December. I know space and role changed a bit when Bron came back, but he's too skilled to not be more aggressive. He's the third best player with AR out, he has to play like it. Bron and Luka are two of the best passers alive, get the advantage in the post and make yourself available... they'll get it to you.

In the past 4 games, there's been two games with only 2 rebounds. Only 4 points last night.

Aldama and Landale bested him last night.

Duren (we tried to get him with the DK package we offered for Williams... man, if only) and Sengun outplayed him and he split it vs Williams.

I know he's a vibes and go with the flow guy, but the guy to start the year is a $20m a year guy. This guy is a $9m-12m

 

yeah, i'm not complaining about him overall. him and hayes is way better than hayes starting and a retread backup. and he's still outproducing his salary. but if he's trying to make me squeamish about being able to keep in the summer, he's doing it wrong.

advanced stats have him as our second best center this year.

 

I’m not interested in bringing him back next year tbh. Unless he re-signed for like $10 million a year and was willing to be half of a true timeshare like Lively and Gafford in Dallas, which I don’t think he would do.

At some point you have to care about actually building a championship caliber team more than contract value. I don’t think he’s the right center for a team built around Luka and Austin.

 

I don’t know what you guys are watching. I am watching our two “leaders” chucking non stop.

Not a single PnR last game that can recall.

 

I mentioned the lack of touches for Ayton as well in the Game Thread.
It’s a combo of these three: JJ not telling the team to go inside more, our ball handlers choosing not to dish it to Ayton, and DA not demanding the rock down low.
This team decides to play a dumb brand of basketball for too many spells throughout every game. This is the second largest contributor to is not being a real contender.

 

I’m only bringing him back on the cheap as well if this continues. He’s never stuck with a squad because there’s too many games in which he’s perfectly happy with fading into the background.
If he wants that bag, he better return to what he was doing earlier this season.

 

Ayton has never really been a great post guy, even at his best in Phoenix. He can punish some mismatches but he's not someone you just feed the ball to on the block against other centers. I think his disengagement the last few games has more more to do with the fact that we've been running more organized offense lately as opposed to freelance P&R. Organized offense has been indisputably better for this team statistically going back a few years now, so I'm not complaining about that. Obviously you can run P&R as part of organized offense, but we do seem to be straying away from P&R lately after being extremely (freelance) P&R heavy to start the season.

I think another part of this too is that Ayton's best P&R chemistry was with Austin, it's been more of a work in progress with Luka. Luka really to use the threat of a lob to maneuver his way into the point, I don't think he's quite figured out yet how to do the same using the threat of the pocket pass. Which is one of the reasons why he's been getting to the rim less this year IMO. And you're not going to see much P&R between LeBron and Ayton because teams will be pretty comfortable switching those.

 

Him interesting - two man data shows no big difference between Luka and AR. It does show that losing Rui's spacing seems to have hurt Ayton and Luka (Luka's hasn't been as good since the Slovenia trip)

 

we'd have to give up picks to get another center at this level. Plus they are just not available, look at what we had to give up for Mark Williams last year

I'm hoping they resign him, so we can keep the assets for other 2 way players

 

Ayton is a good center: he's just having a downswing I think in large part due to the injuries. Plus he's known to do - he'll get better
No brainer re-signing if the contract is reasonable

 

all true, but you're arguing from a stronger position if you're rebounding and defending regardless.

he's heading for a vet min or tpmle after opting in next year if he doesn't square things up. and again: i'm generally pleased with his play overall and think it's been way better than what i thought would happen at center for us this season. this is just the way of the league.

you have to find energy even if the ball doesn't find you. you're not luka, jokic, SGA, etc. you're a role player. you can be a very good one, but it can't depend on you getting consistent touches. there are guys who will do the work without that (e.g., luke kornet).

 

All of that makes sense, but why not just add a few more touches for him within the set plays? He’s shown he can hit that middy and jump hook at a high clip, so why go completely away from it. Using more options, as opposed to less, just makes it harder on the opponent. I’m not saying feed the big man every other time down, but he should be getting more touches than he has recently- just based on his high FG%. Plus, most bigs try harder on D when “you feed the big dog.”

 

LeBron’s fault tbh. He’s demanded his touches despite things going great without him. He’s not giving team what they need most. He’s not getting his big man involved.

 

BS he finds him when he’s in good position. Same as Luka and same as Austin. Someone has to help score the ball consistently of our big 3 when one of them, AR, is out and Luka’s 3 ball is cold as ice currently. These agendas about stuff on the court just because some of you hate the guy.

 

^^^