i thought his start was a little choppy, and he still needs to stop bringing the ball down when he catches in the paint. i think he actually knows this and just tends to forget and go back to bad habits, bc after he gets stripped, he tends to keep it high the next time. i've liked his effort on the boards, though. and his iso d both in the paint and on the perimeter have been good. he's not why we're losing.
can ayton play 43 minutes? we can try to steal some smallball minutes if hayes isn't going to work. jj pining for ol' DFS right now, lol.
Probably not. He's only logged 40+ minutes 18x in his 520 game career. 1/3 of those were in 2021 post season when he was 22. You can probably count on him for 38 minutes. After that you can use Kleber, then Bron, then Rui to eat those remaining 10 minutes. There's plenty of plays where Rui ended up guarding Sengun first then DA comes over as help, so it's not a matchup Rui can't handle for a few minutes as long as we have help waiting to double or to hit the glass.
i agree that both rui and maxi can provide a bit more resistance in isolation against sengun than hayes does. and i wish we found a few more ways to attack sengun on defense. he's just not very good there, but without luka, we're having trouble getting any penetration. reaves got a couple, but the rust prevented conversion. i get why we're going to ayton some in an attempt to do this, but ayton has to convert at a near perfect rate, which hasn't been happening. this is where i'd love a jarrett allen or i guess even a gafford--those guys will finish those catches within 3 ft at a near 100% rate, which really forces the other team to adjust. they're living with ayton catching on the roll because he's converting like, half of them.
We aren’t really running much pnr action with Ayton. We’re just mainly using him as a screener to get guys open and he isn’t getting much downhill pressure going to the rim. I’m hopeful with Reaves back we can get some of this happening. So far we’ve had more balls dumped to Ayton at the FT line and he’s had to score from there or he is generating offense via offensive boards.
MVP of the game today. His defense in the post made the difference. His board work and embrace of the dirty work made a massive difference tonight.
16 boards, huge reason they couldn’t do their offensive rebounding thing as well as usual, great defense on Sengun as well.
He's had a playoffs run: makes the Luka injury more depressing. Lakers have found a "good enough" center combo in Ayton/Hayes on the cheap. Kennard, Smart returning to form, etc.
Great defense, played a big part of keeping Sengun out of this one. Dominated the glass. He was big time tonight. What i want to see now: show me something against OKC. He's been terrible against them. Show effort and fight.
33 rebounds in 2 games 17 Wednesday and 16 today. bring it on Dominayton vs Oklahoma. Fans will buy you a thousand lion shirts
He was phenomenal last two games. Actually he was as well in game 4 before the unfortunate ejection and in Game 1. Great series from the big man. He came to play.
I think he finally understands what we need from him. I am totally fine with him scoring 5-10 if he is going to defend and rebound like this. He'll have some high-scoring games as well, but that's not what we usually need. He's a great defender and rebounder when he wants to be.
