Deandre Ayton news and discussion

[NapoleonII]

He didn't seem mentally engaged in the bubble as much as we saw him in the beggininng/middle of the season (after his dumbass suspension)

Like, a little step behind everyone on offense. His hands were not great, catching, being ready for passes.

[WeekapaugGroove]

Ball handling is the biggest thing for me, skill-wise. It doesn't need to be advanced, but he needs to expand his face-up game to more than jab step-jab step-jump shot/pass. Being able to put the ball on the floor and create contact is essential to getting to the free throw line. You're not going to get their consistently scoring on lobs, putbacks, deep paint touches, mid-range jumpers, and hook shoots/turnaround jumpers. Joel Embiid doesn't get to the free throw line 8 times a game without squaring up, driving, and creating contact.

Maturity is obvious. He's still a gangly, goofy kid that doesn't know what he's physically capable of or what kind of player he needs to be. It should come with age, not sure what age that'll be though. I trust Monty to get him where he needs to go.

100% and ball handling is absolutely learnable skill that he wouldn't even need to become great at to really help his offensive game.



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[darealjuice]

Ball handling is the biggest thing for me, skill-wise. It doesn't need to be advanced, but he needs to expand his face-up game to more than jab step-jab step-jump shot/pass. Being able to put the ball on the floor and create contact is essential to getting to the free throw line. You're not going to get their consistently scoring on lobs, putbacks, deep paint touches, mid-range jumpers, and hook shoots/turnaround jumpers. Joel Embiid doesn't get to the free throw line 8 times a game without squaring up, driving, and creating contact.

Maturity is obvious. He's still a gangly, goofy kid that doesn't know what he's physically capable of or what kind of player he needs to be. It should come with age, not sure what age that'll be though. I trust Monty to get him where he needs to go.

100% and ball handling is absolutely learnable skill that he wouldn't even need to become great at to really help his offensive game.



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Definitely. No one is asking him to be Kyrie, he just needs be comfortable driving in a straight line with a couple bodies in the paint.

[thamadkant]

Ayton will not become a different type of player and character as he becomes more mature. He cannot become Amare or KG on regards to passion... Completely different personalities.

Ayton is similar to other timid personalities like Duncan, Hakeem, Robinson etc. He's not that guy who will always hype himself up and play super aggressive one on one..


He needs more one on one opportunities which alone will boost his free throw attempts. Assuming he is positioned deep and his defender has to cover him hard near the rim... Also he needs referees to call touch fouls on his favor like how Embiid and Davis get it....
We all know referees call more than half of the foul calls subjectively and 50/50 calls will always be awarded to players due to reputation and team situation... Unfortunately fouls are still interpreted subjectively a lot of times.

Ayton needs to be setup more. Suns need to have an inside outside system... Like how Lakers are doing. They are beating small teams because they have giants who dominate the rebounds and the paint while also having slashers and shooters that favor LeBron's style.

Suns need that so it means Ayton needs to have intentional touches down low and inside the paint to give him a chance to score by himself and draw a foul.

[Ghost of Kleine]

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[WeekapaugGroove]

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His next contract is going to be interesting. The player he is right now is not someone I'd just automatically hand a 5 yr max to, but they have all next season to see if he improves and deserves it and if next summer when he's extension eligible you're still not sure then you can let him play that 4th year and decide after that. Hell you could let him hit the RFA market and match.

Should be noted that I would have said the same thing after Booker's 2nd season. At that point he was a player who showed promise but wasn't that efficient. He took a leap year 3.

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[RedIndian]

Yep, it's too early. Let's not forget that he also only played 30 odd games this year. So he's effectively not had two full seasons under his belt. Bigs take time, and I expect we'll be in a much better position to say whether he's max worthy in a couple of years.

[spanishninja]

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His next contract is going to be interesting. The player he is right now is not someone I'd just automatically hand a 5 yr max to, but they have all next season to see if he improves and deserves it and if next summer when he's extension eligible you're still not sure then you can let him play that 4th year and decide after that. Hell you could let him hit the RFA market and match.

Should be noted that I would have said the same thing after Booker's 2nd season. At that point he was a player who showed promise but wasn't that efficient. He took a leap year 3.

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also think about Jamal Murray. Before last season, I'm sure everybody was surprised he got the max extension too. But he still got it, and even with a subpar regular season this year nobody really questioned the move. Obviously he showed up in the playoffs, but with these first extensions off rookie contracts, I think teams consider these the price of doing business these days.

[lilfishi22]

I thought Murray's extension was an overpay but that's on par with most of these budding young players who become extension eligible these days. That being said, I think you could be a little more confident about a guard becoming a legit star than a C becoming a star in today's NBA so comparing the two is a little apples and oranges. I do agree that Ayton is almost certainly not a max level extension player and he'll really need to step up again this upcoming season to prove he is more than just an above average double double big man.

[GoodBehavior]

I thought Murray's extension was an overpay but that's on par with most of these budding young players who become extension eligible these days. That being said, I think you could be a little more confident about a guard becoming a legit star than a C becoming a star in today's NBA so comparing the two is a little apples and oranges. I do agree that Ayton is almost certainly not a max level extension player and he'll really need to step up again this upcoming season to prove he is more than just an above average double double big man.

Max contract is a flawed system. I am surprised not more people are talking about it. It essentially forces small-market teams to overpay for secondary "stars."

Murray was overpaid because he plays for a small-market team. He had a decent playoff run, but his RS stats and careers stats are not impressive. It's doubtful he's going to improve much from here, in fact he didn't really improve from last year. I see a 18-20pt scorer, 5 assists kind of player. Khris Middleton also got an absurd max, which severely limited the Bucks ability to resign other players. Injury-ridden Porzingis got a mind-boggling max. This is coming from a decently ran organization (Mavs). The dysfunctional Knicks were said to be hesitant to hand Porzingis' a max contract. Mavs in the past also had to give ridiculous contracts to Harrison Barnes and DeAndre Jordan ... That's the cost of being a small-market team.

All these guys I mentioned above (sans Jordan who signed a one-year deal) are probably going to accumulate maybe a couple of All-star appearances in their entire career. Second year Ayton, warts and all, is already pretty close to these guys. In a market where Drummond, the one-trick phony, is getting paid close to $29M next year, Ayton will probably get paid, very close to the max. This is just mental masturbation IMO, Ayton like most big men will probably take a step function change in improvement in year 3 (assuming he doesn't do anything dumb).

[WeekapaugGroove]

I thought Murray's extension was an overpay but that's on par with most of these budding young players who become extension eligible these days. That being said, I think you could be a little more confident about a guard becoming a legit star than a C becoming a star in today's NBA so comparing the two is a little apples and oranges. I do agree that Ayton is almost certainly not a max level extension player and he'll really need to step up again this upcoming season to prove he is more than just an above average double double big man.

Max contract is a flawed system. I am surprised not more people are talking about it. It essentially forces small-market teams to overpay for secondary "stars."

Murray was overpaid because he plays for a small-market team. He had a decent playoff run, but his RS stats and careers stats are not impressive. It's doubtful he's going to improve much from here, in fact he didn't really improve from last year. I see a 18-20pt scorer, 5 assists kind of player. Khris Middleton also got an absurd max, which severely limited the Bucks ability to resign other players. Injury-ridden Porzingis got a mind-boggling max. This is coming from a decently ran organization (Mavs). The dysfunctional Knicks were said to be hesitant to hand Porzingis' a max contract. Mavs in the past also had to give ridiculous contracts to Harrison Barnes and DeAndre Jordan ... That's the cost of being a small-market team.

All these guys I mentioned above (sans Jordan who signed a one-year deal) are probably going to accumulate maybe a couple of All-star appearances in their entire career. Second year Ayton, warts and all, is already pretty close to these guys. In a market where Drummond, the one-trick phony, is getting paid close to $29M next year, Ayton will probably get paid, very close to the max. This is just mental masturbation IMO, Ayton like most big men will probably take a step function change in improvement in year 3 (assuming he doesn't do anything dumb).

It's absolutely a flawed system, the true top end guys get underpaid and that second tier gets overpaid. The best would be a hard cap and no max contacts. It would create the most parity because it would spread the high price guys out more. But the players union would never go for it (neither would some big market teams) because the middle class players would gets screwed.

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[lilfishi22]

I thought Murray's extension was an overpay but that's on par with most of these budding young players who become extension eligible these days. That being said, I think you could be a little more confident about a guard becoming a legit star than a C becoming a star in today's NBA so comparing the two is a little apples and oranges. I do agree that Ayton is almost certainly not a max level extension player and he'll really need to step up again this upcoming season to prove he is more than just an above average double double big man.

Max contract is a flawed system. I am surprised not more people are talking about it. It essentially forces small-market teams to overpay for secondary "stars."

Murray was overpaid because he plays for a small-market team. He had a decent playoff run, but his RS stats and careers stats are not impressive. It's doubtful he's going to improve much from here, in fact he didn't really improve from last year. I see a 18-20pt scorer, 5 assists kind of player. Khris Middleton also got an absurd max, which severely limited the Bucks ability to resign other players. Injury-ridden Porzingis got a mind-boggling max. This is coming from a decently ran organization (Mavs). The dysfunctional Knicks were said to be hesitant to hand Porzingis' a max contract. Mavs in the pa
st also had to give ridiculous contracts to Harrison Barnes and DeAndre Jordan ... That's the cost of being a small-market team.

All these guys I mentioned above (sans Jordan who signed a one-year deal) are probably going to accumulate maybe a couple of All-star appearances in their entire career. Second year Ayton, warts and all, is already pretty close to these guys. In a market where Drummond, the one-trick phony, is getting paid close to $29M next year, Ayton will probably get paid, very close to the max. This is just mental masturbation IMO, Ayton like most big men will probably take a step function change in improvement in year 3 (assuming he doesn't do anything dumb).

Absolutely agree that it's a flawed system. These small market teams who don't attract FA's in the first place are now saddled with these overpaid players who just aren't worth it while teams who do attract the big time FA's ends up having a beneficial "cap" on how much they can pay legit stars. I've always thought these supermax or rookie supermax extensions will become normalised in the NBA because there's only a handful real stars (and perhaps another handful of truly promising young players) in the league that are actually worth their deals but there are 30 teams and potentially 30 supermax spots and the majority of those teams with a super max spots will end up spending that money on those false stars.

I do expect Ayton to get a big deal even and if he's worth that contract will be shown next season. In this fast evolving league, Drummond's extension looked like a serious overpay before the ink dried on that dotted line. In 2016 when he signed that deal, the league had already started to move towards a much more guard/forward oriented game with traditional bigs like Drummond being quickly replaced with mobile wings with some size that can shoot. The Warriors had already laid the blueprint on where the league was moving to. The caveat to that is that, as mentioned, this is a fast evolving league so the league could pivot again but I don't expect it to go back to the old days of the traditional 20/10 big man being super valuable.

With Ayton, while I do expect improvement from him, the key isn't just general improvement but rather improvement in the areas where he can still absolutely dominate in today's league. So just being a consistent 20/10 guy just isn't enough and quite frankly, isn't as valuable as it once was. What he needs to improve on is his ability to be an offensive anchor (next to Booker) where you can give him the ball and he can be a 7ft triple threat wherever he catches the ball. He needs to continue his quickly improving defensive abilities and become a guy that players don't want to see in front of them. He really needs to put his stamp on the game because his current trajectory to me right now is a 22-24ppg finesse big who rebounds well and can defend but if we are to become an elite team and if he is to truly be worth the massive deal we expect him to be offered, he needs to be more a lot more than that.

[Biff]

I'm going to be lazy and ask the question instead of doing research myself but has any player ever come into the league like Ayton has, lacking aggression, lacking the desire to draw contact and changed during their career into a dunk slamming, FT getting force to be reckon with down low?

https://www.basketball-reference.com/players/a/antetgi01.html

First guy that came to mind is: https://www.basketball-reference.com/players/o/onealje01.html

Check out this guy's jump in the 3rd year: https://www.basketball-reference.com/players/a/adebaba01.html

https://www.basketball-reference.com/players/m/malonka01.html

https://www.basketball-reference.com/players/g/garneke01.html

Years 5-8 https://www.basketball-reference.com/players/j/jordade01.html

Started out decent...but got a lot better https://www.basketball-reference.com/players/h/howardw01.html

https://www.basketball-reference.com/players/b/boshch01.html

https://www.basketball-reference.com/players/b/boozeca01.html

I think part of it is being a one and done guy....which is more recent for the most part....other guys with more college and experience being coached probably come in better at it.

You need to look at free throw rate (FTR), not free throw attempts. Pretty much all of those guys just got more minutes/usage, thus their attempts went up. Giannis and Adebayo both had higher FTR their rookie years than they do for their career average.

Ayton has one of the worst FTR's for a center of all time. Not a single hall of fame big man has a FTR as bad as his. That doesn't mean he can't be a hall of famer but I still find his FTR concerning, especially since his FTR went down quite a bit (25% decrease) from year 1 to 2. The only other big man in the game right now that is considered good that has a similar FTR is Vucevic.

[GoodBehavior]

I'm going to be lazy and ask the question instead of doing research myself but has any player ever come into the league like Ayton has, lacking aggression, lacking the desire to draw contact and changed during their career into a dunk slamming, FT getting force to be reckon with down low?

https://www.basketball-reference.com/players/a/antetgi01.html

First guy that came to mind is: https://www.basketball-reference.com/players/o/onealje01.html

Check out this guy's jump in the 3rd year: https://www.basketball-reference.com/players/a/adebaba01.html

https://www.basketball-reference.com/players/m/malonka01.html

https://www.basketball-reference.com/players/g/garneke01.html

Years 5-8 https://www.basketball-reference.com/players/j/jordade01.html

Started out decent...but got a lot better https://www.basketball-reference.com/players/h/howardw01.html

https://www.basketball-reference.com/players/b/boshch01.html

https://www.basketball-reference.com/players/b/boozeca01.html

I think part of it is being a one and done guy....which is more recent for the most part....other guys with more college and experience being coached probably come in better at it.

You need to look at free throw rate (FTR), not free throw attempts. Pretty much all of those guys just got more minutes/usage, thus their attempts went up. Giannis and Adebayo both had higher FTR their rookie years than they do for their career average.

Ayton has one of the worst FTR's for a center of all time. Not a single hall of fame big man has a FTR as bad as his. That doesn't mean he can't be a hall of famer but I still find his FTR concerning, especially since his FTR went down quite a bit (25% decrease) from year 1 to 2. The only other big man in the game right now that is considered good that has a similar FTR is Vucevic.

The game is changing and free throws are coming down. Guys are fouling out less, FTA per game is declining, etc. So comparing against former hall of famers' FTA or FTR is going to be problematic.

Jokic is the best center in the NBA (IMO) and his FTR and free throw attempts are low. Jokic played very physical in the playoff and yet still his FTA attempts are low. That's just the nature of the game currently. I would be surprised if Ayton didn't average 4 fta/game for his career, which is what Jokic is averaging currently.

Keep in mind that Ayton is (likely) the most physical center around his age group. He destroys younger center and is typically double teamed against young center. I am not sure about his matchup against Bam though. I wish Bam guarded Ayton more during that lone Heat game. Ayton was terrible defending in the perimeter, but his inside presence was obvious. My gut tells me the reason why Bam didn't guard Ayton as much, is Ayton would be too physical. Karl Anthony Towns doesn't guard Ayton either.

It remains to be seen if this dominance (against young centers) carries over as he gets older. Remember other centers do get considerably stronger. Gobert was pathetically weak his first two years. Guys like Jaren and Mo Bamba can narrow the gap. But with Ayton physical attributes and nba centers getting smaller, it's hard not seeing him dominate the paint, sans some change in the way the game is played.

[bwgood77]

There are only a handful of Cs who average more than 4 free throws a game.

Embiid - 8.5, and obviously Ayton is a much different player than Embiid.
Towns - 6.5
Gobert - 5.9
Harrell - 5.6
Drummond - 5.2
Nurkic - 4.4
Jokic - 4.1

Ayton obviously needs to become agressive, and I'm not sure they majority expect him to play like Embiid did, score like Towns does, or defend the paint like Gobert does. Not that Gobert's D helps him get to the line, but his low FT% probably does.

It's definitely something that he needs to work on, but I don't expect it to become a strength of his.

[Frank Lee]

Until he takes the game seriously, he will continue to underachieve. The good thing is, his underachieving is still a 20/10 night.

Somebody really needs to find that intensity switch and flip it.... but I’m afraid the MadKant is right. So be it.

[PharmD]

Develop some post footwork. He is TERRIBLE at that. He has super sweet touch around the rim as well as the physical profile to be great in the post but all he can currently do is faceup and shoot a contested midrange.

Not that the offense needs to be all Ayton postups but the defense should be terrified when he rolls up a smaller player on a switch.

[Saberestar]

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[Ghost of Kleine]

Kellan Olson (@KellanOlson) Tweeted:
Deandre Ayton said he's going by a schedule right now every day. Works out 4 days a week.

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[matt131]

Kellan Olson (@KellanOlson) Tweeted:
Deandre Ayton said he's going by a schedule right now every day. Works out 4 days a week.

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hope he's studying and watching film the other 3 days.