On Undisputed - Skip "Monty told DA that you freaking quit on us"

[God Squad]

Skip and Shannon are legit.

i don't care what people think. i think skip and shannon actually like each other

I personally don't care much for any of these NBA morning shows, but I probably like them the most.

[bwgood77]

Yeah I buy this narrative. Ayton has become a bit of a scapegoat/whipping boy as heaps of money and praise go to CP3, Booker, and Bridges. You can make an argument that he's their most important player. He's their most efficient scorer this year, and carries massive defensive responsibilities as a switcher and primary backline defensive anchor. Despite this, his role is kept limited on offense. He's a pure-play finisher despite flashing a lot more game in his early seasons without Paul. Fans and media alike credit Chris Paul for Ayton's offensive success despite his scoring numbers going down since Paul joined the team. The Suns lose to the Pelicans in the first round without Ayton scoring 20ppg on 70% shooting + limiting Jonas Valanciunas + meeting CJ+Ingram high on screens. The FO openly bristled at the idea of a max extension. And yet we hear very little dissent from Ayton. He's stayed a good soldier until possibly now.

Having spent a lot of time in Phoenix the last few months and listening to local sports radio occasionally it really is crazy the way they treat Ayton compared to what I see on the court. You obviously agree that while Ayton is not a superstar he is a very high level big that is far more important to the Suns success than anybody around the team wants to believe.

Something people forget is that players are human, if you had spent years being blamed for all the problems a team has and basically scorned when you asked for your extension, it has to bug you on some level. Sooner or later you will see some kind of reaction, and truth is who can really blame him? I wouldn't want to go back into a game where you are down 40 and then have people blame you if things didn't turn around.

When I think about why the Suns are successful, I first think about how good they are at every position (with power forward being a weakness) and how they have guys in perfect defined roles that the players buy into. I really think the Suns top 4 guys (Paul, Bridges, Booker, Ayton) all have some kind of case for being the most important player overall. Ayton absolutely has made the Suns one of the most airtight teams against opponent game plans with his rare versatility and just having no weaknesses in his role. He hangs with everyone on defense, doesn't miss shots, doesn't turn it over, and is capable of giving the team 20+ points just by setting screens for their guards. Do they beat the Nuggets last year without Ayton being the only guy ever to bother Jokic offensively?

But Booker and Paul get MVP chat and massive contracts. Bridges gets DPOY finalist and gets the big extension. Ayton gets chirped on the bench by his coach and has the owners publicly defend not giving him an extension. No all-star talk, no all-defense buzz, very little public praise from teammates or coaches about how valuable he is.

Didn't he also get more player votes for all star than Towns? I don't think he's better than Towns but I know he finished 6th in player voting for frontcourt players which surprised me...I think ahead of Paul George and a few big names.

Yes, checking it he was 6 in player rank...so he seems respected by his peers but not as much the fans and media.

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[bwgood77]

They're also the ones who see him every single day and are viewing things with a much more critical (realistic?) eye, so I don't think you can just hand-wave away his weaknesses.

Yes and no. While I will usually trust a smart fan of a team to provide more intensive insight, there's a lot of dumb fans who can't see the forest for the trees when it comes to their own team. How much to value your own team's players is often the majority of diehard fans are terrible at. That can be grossly overvaluating a player because you only compare him to other guys on your team, or the flip side: undervaluing because they are disappointing you to the point you don't think about how well they're doing relative to the league. If Deandre Ayton is the 7th best center in the league, that means as many as 23 other teams would kill to have him, but to team fans they don't always see that. Think about that popular thread a while back where a Mavs fan wanted to send DFS to China because he had a rough shooting slump to start the season. Fans aren't always rational. I'll trust insight from the best of them, but I'm not just blindly trusting the zeitgeist of a team's fanbase.

Ayton is a very good player, but unfortunately for him you're hoping for great with the No. 1 pick, and that's always going to be hanging over his head, especially when there was a legit super-duper star to be had -- two depending on how you rate Trae -- and even more so now that said super-duper star just sent you packing to complete another 2-0 collapse while you got benched. That might or might not be fair, but that's reality.

I don't really care about draft position at this point in their careers. It is what it is. Who knows how they'd be with Luka, but I'm not going to forever value Ayton solely on how much worse he is than Luka. Whiffing on a pick isn't as bad when you still get a good player.

I've never been a good assessor of whether or not somebody can really coach. So much of NBA success just comes down to how much talent you have. But Monty has never struck me as an unfair or unreasonable, and the fact that he basically benched Ayton in two games in the playoffs, including a Game 7 at home, speaks volumes to me. That absolutely should not happen, under any circumstances, for a player you hope to be one of your franchise cornerstones moving forward.

I don't know the full story and I'm certainly not assuming Ayton is an innocent victim of Monty's irrational wrath! I imagine he might have deserved it but I'm not making a personal judgement without knowing. Of course it's a bad look and I don't assume Monty would do that for no reason. In terms of the benching... well the whole Suns team should have been benched in that game. I don't think it's Ayton's quality of play, he must have mouthed off, and it already being a massive blowout when Ayton got benched, I don't think that was a strategic move. The other one (game 5 or game 2?), we see coaches go small all the time to try to mess with the other team or goose the offense. I have a lot of thoughts about this strategy that I wont vent about here, but it's worth noting that the Suns were massively outscoring the Mavs with Deandre on the floor in both those games.

I'm moreso responding to the team's perceived mistreatment of Ayton overall, rather than this one game or series.

All of that said, the player who should be getting absolutely roasted today is Booker. This is a dude who was passively-aggressively whining about not getting any serious MVP love on Twitter a few weeks prior. Well, now you know why. Because in a Game 7 at home, you couldn't score a single bucket before it was already over. The cherry on top of one of the most stunning meltdowns in NBA history.

Yeah, I think the big just so much more often gets **** on than the scoring guard. I remember watching the Raps a lot when Jonas Valanciunas would draw the fanbases ire for his pick & roll coverages, but I couldn't help but notice that all the worst ones started with Derozan getting stuck on a pick and forcing Jonas into guarding 2 guys in the paint.

I don't really understand why he was pulled when he was...he certainly hadn't quit on the court and was arguably doing the most out there...he was responsible for all their 3rd qtr pts when he came out...had defended several plays, contesting shots.

And I don't think he refused to go back in. I don't really buy what Skip and Lil Wayne are saying. I think Monty subbed for some reason..maybe switch it up since Suns started poorly and put Bizmack in for energy or something....and Ayton said something that really made Monty mad (he was probably already livid about the entire team's play) and Monty was angry enough to just leave him on the bench, but at that point it didn't matter.

I think a lot of assumptions are being made by I know a guy who says he heard this or I read his lips and think he said this.

[bwgood77]

I haven’t read this thread, so not sure if someone has mentioned it. But it looked to me that the Suns just flat out refused to pass Ayton the ball in some games.

This guy is so good at getting position and sealing when getting switches and these guys just flat out don’t pass to him. I’d much rather have Ayton shoot 15 - 20 shots per game over Booker forcing up those one legged banks shots with defence in his grill.

Ultimately I think Ayton got frustrated from doing all the right things (setting picks, rolling, sealing) only to watch the wings hoist up contested shots. It’s a thankless job and a good point guard and coach should recognise that and get the man his touches. It’s not as though he’s Kendrick Perkins out there. He was one of the leagues most efficient players this season averaging 657% true shooting. Averaged 20/10 on 70% shooting against the Pelicans and then gets frozen out.

All this and is only 23! He deserves better.

Yeah, he always has his hand up for the ball and gets ignored.

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[cam24thomas]

If anything Monty quit on the team, while Ayton averaged 17.9 points on .640 field shooting in this year's playoffs

[madmaxmedia]

Ayton definitely has a loser mentality. He cares about money. Just get rid of him. I’m sure once he gets paid by some other team he’ll play better for them.

Isn’t that basically a reason to pay him then?

[leolozon]

Why are people questionning this?

-Ayton didn't get back in the game.
-Monty was frustrated after the game about Ayton.
-Booker acknowledge that there was an issue.
-People have said that Ayton and Monty got into an argument. That Ayton questionned a substitution, that Monty got pissed about it and asked Ayton if he wanted to go back in the game and Ayton said no. (The guy of Locked on Suns talked about it.)

It's not a stretch to think that Monty told Ayton that he was quitting on the team after Ayton refused to get back in.

I just heard about this and watched the 3rd quarter up until that point. He certainly did not quit before that. He did get switched onto Luka a couple times around 10-11 minutes, then hit a hook shot at 9:40 and got a steal and assist to Bridges for fast break dunk at 9:15, then helped on a Brunson shot at 9.....someone messed up and left Brunson open in the corner right after that...and it looked like it was Bridges. Then Ayton got pulled. Ayton was on Powell in the middle and Bridges ran away from Brunson to the other side of the court.

Anyway, there were only 4 pts scored when he got pulled...his hook shot and his steal and assist to Bridges for the dunk. Monty was probably just really mad the lead had widened after halftime and wanted to throw blame somewhere and can't do it to Booker and Paul...he would never do that.

I wasn't make a judgement on who's right or wrong or if Ayton indeed quit on the team. I was saying that it's easy to believe that Monty could have said that.

I understand why Ayton could have been angry about the situation, especially when Monty pulled him out before he was supposed too. It's weird to take a player out of the game in a lost cause and then blame said player for not wanting to get back in. Looks like Monty started it.

I think that Ayton could have been used better than he was.

[DwayneSchintzus]

its weird that Monty got mad at him when they were down THIRTY.

so what if he "quit on the team"? the team was down 30 points, the game was over.

no amount of Rudy, try-hard BS from Ayton was going to change the outcome at that point.

[Pattycakes]

Y’all got mad over 6 pages over something that’s probably true and fairly obvious/insignificant.