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A considerable number of people are feeling bullish about Deandre Ayton coming to the Los Angeles Lakers. He reportedly agreed to sign with the team for two years and $16.6 million, and he will give them their first legitimate true starting center in years.
While he is an outstanding rim-running lob threat, as well as a productive rebounder, he hasn’t been a rim protector in his seven seasons in the NBA. Plenty have also criticized his overall defense and accused him of not caring enough about his play on that end of the floor.
Then there is the matter of his attitude over the past couple of seasons as a member of the Portland Trail Blazers.
Jason Quick of The Athletic wrote a revealing piece that detailed how concerning Ayton’s behavior was and how it annoyed Trail Blazers coach Chauncey Billups.
“See, the Blazers could live with Ayton missing shots or his man scoring on him,” Quick wrote. “They could even live with him being limited by injuries to 55 and 40 games in his two seasons in Portland.
“But in the end, they couldn’t live with his bad ways. The tardiness to team flights and practices, according to a team source. The skipping of rehabilitation appointments. Fans saw him slam chairs when he was taken out of games. And a team source said there were tantrums in the locker room when he was sidelined for poor effort.”
Even worse, when Ayton first came to Portland two summers ago, he hyped himself up big time and failed to live up to his own hype.
“In his first news conference in Portland, he referred to himself as ‘Domin-Ayton.’ During the 95 times he played in Portland, he was maybe dominant in a handful of games. He once said he has nothing to prove because ‘I’m a max (contract) player and I’ll continue to be a max player.’ But in both Phoenix and Portland, he chaffed his coaches with inconsistent effort. In Game 7 of the 2022 Western Conference semifinals, Suns coach Monty Williams benched him in the second half, prompting a heated argument. In a December game against Utah in Portland, Billups called a timeout two minutes into the second half and benched Ayton for the rest of the game.
“After the 141-99 loss to the [Utah] Jazz, in which Ayton was minus-29 in his 17 minutes, Billups said, ‘I didn’t like his spirit in the game.'”
Portland hasn’t exactly been in a winning situation over the last two years, so one has to wonder if part of Ayton’s unacceptable behavior had to do with being in that type of situation. When he was with the Phoenix Suns for the first five years of his pro career, he played well and put up better numbers. In fact, during the 2019-20 season, he averaged a decent 1.5 blocks a game, albeit in 38 contests.
He was a major contributor to the Suns’ trip to the 2021 NBA Finals, and he averaged 15.8 points, 11.8 boards and 1.1 blocks per game while shooting a sizzling 65.8% from the field.
The hope is that with a winning team such as the Lakers and alongside LeBron James and Luka Doncic, Ayton, the former No. 1 pick in the 2018 NBA Draft, will be on his best behavior and play closer to the top of his potential.
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