bigfoot wrote:Last night was just another example of why Ayton isn't a max player. In the 1st quarter, he grabbed a rebound and gave it to CP3. All the other players are sprinting down the court on offense and CP3 turns and yells at Ayton to run. He has to be reminded to do the proper things in the game.
Deandre was really non-existent on offense for most of the game. His rolls were off and his hands were bad. Most of CP3's turnovers were poor attempts at catches by Ayton. Honestly, McGee is a much better offensive option than Ayton in the PNR. McGee is crazy athletic and long and knows how to dribble the ball well through traffic and adjust his body on pick and rolls.
It's hard to tell if it is a lack of offensive BBIQ or the desire to work hard. Probably a combo of both. Right now he is a lesser version of Rudy Gobert when comparing their first four years. Rudy didn't get a max until his 9th season.
I listened to the Timeline podcast a couple of days ago and they talked about Ayton vs Frank/McGee, in particular when it comes to hand offs at the top of the key. They mentioned that the guys or the coaching staff don't trust Ayton as much as they do Frank/McGee when they run sets that involve the bigs making decisions after a hand off by a guard. With Frank and McGee, they make the right reads and Frank especially kind of has a poor man's triple threat whereas Ayton really doesn't have much options out there. He's not really a 3PT threat, he's not a threat to drive the ball and while he's a decent passer out of the post, he's not a good playmaking passer in the way that McGee is. So when the team runs a set leaving Ayton to make a decision it's easy for the defense to back off him because he's a non-threat with the ball. Without the ball, he's a legit rolling threat but with the ball, teams don't really care about him that far from the basket. It's not too dissimilar to Gobert who is also a non-threat in hand off situations out on the perimeter.
For Ayton to improve, he really needs to work on some aspect of the triple threat game because right now he's a total non-threat which just won't do.