lebron was utterly disgusted with him earlier in the game, too. i actually wonder if the eye is bothering him? he started by missing some of those floaters he never misses, then i think he got in his head a bit. he gets so sluggish out there, too, especially when you contrast it with hayes's energy/activity. he did a couple good things on the defensive boards and just being a presence in the paint, but offensively that was one of the worst games i've seen from him. i actually felt bad for him after a while.
He's shot has been hitting the front of the rim more often lately. I thought he (and Jake too) just were tired from the last roadie, but it extended past that. The bobbles and clank after clank after clank. Bron and Luka can't make it much easier for him than tonight. Disgraceful outing. He started out the season doing what he had to do on both ends to command a higher, long term salary. When he was outplaying nearly every center he faced up against, his annual salary would have doubled (maybe even up to $20m) if that was the level he was going to bring for the rest of the season. His play would have suitors lining up for him. Pivot to now, he's looking closer to a TPMLE player somewhere else. I know Bron came back and that ate into his touches, but that isn't an excuse for the reduced effort, impact, defense and going full on Kwame Ayton. Mavs are small right now and you get FOUR point blank tries and still can't get it done. When you're not missing a shot, you're getting traffic coned by a vertically challenged guard.
That was disappointing to put it lightly. If you can’t get motivated when this is your make it or break it year in the league you might be in trouble, if he doesn’t wake up he’s headed for Mini-MLE deals from here on out.
Horrible game, but overall he has pretty good stats for this team. If you told me when we got him that he would average 13.7 while shooting 68% and leading the team in rebounds, I would have been happy.
Yeah. It was just tough to watch. The frustration got worse as the Mavs went on their run. I’m happy with the win, but the game would have been a snooze fest if he was hitting those shots.
I want to like the guy and was happy we got him... but i hope he's not here next season. I can't deal with these soft, brain dead players anymore.
Worse than a f***ing storm trooper And then to not even try on defense following that kind of shooting
yeah, it's easy for him to see that his man isn't running the floor, but had he just sprinted to the basket like bigs are coached to do in transition, smart would have had a much easier job getting to max and challenging.
I don't want to hear "Ayton/Hayes is fine" anymore. I don't care if his contract is cheap, at some point we have to actually try to build a championship caliber team and Ayton is not capable of being the guy to start/close games at that level. Plus Luka pretty clearly doesn't love playing with him. I'd rather go into next season with Hayes and another minimum center with a clear understanding that we need to bring someone else in at the position than pay Ayton anything significant.
The problem with him is that the stuff he is usually good at (touch around the rim, midrange jumper) are icing on the cake stuff that is nice to have but not essential. Luka, and to a lesser degree Austin and LeBron, can turn just about any center into a pretty good roll man. Just look at Hayes. The stuff we desperately need from the center spot (rim protection, physicality, ability to mitigate the effect of our lacking perimeter defense with IQ and timely help) is stuff he's at best inconsistent with, and most of the time just not very good at. The "he needs touches to stay engaged" thing is also the exact opposite of what we need from that position.
again, the weird issue is that he's having a career-worst offensive season (btw, it looks like nic claxton's offensive season last year, for folks interested in that). defensively, he's been ok to good (not great, but better than say, vucevic). the two centers i thought we might get in the offseason were lopez and capela (either/or). they're performing a little worse for a little more money than ayton. iow, beggars could not be choosers. my guess is ayton's not got much trade value given his PO combined with a lack of bird rights, so we're just going to have to try to make it work. one thing that's become clear is we need him to play minutes with reaves and hayes to play minutes with doncic. so when reaves gets back, the first sub should be hayes and gabe's replacement (praying) for reaves and ayton, who can come back together when luka sits to start the second.
