The Los Angeles Lakers are scrapping together a winning season with popsicle sticks, Elmer's glue and Luka Doncic explosions. What they are not getting is reliable basketball from Deandre Ayton. The onetime No. 1 pick was supposed to save the Lakers, and instead, he is contributing to their demise.
Everything is amplified when it comes to the Lakers, and signing Deandre Ayton this summer was no exception. The onetime Phoenix Suns center agreed to a buyout with his current team, the Portland Trail Blazers, giving back some money off of the max contract he was on to hit the market. He signed with the Lakers to be the big-name flashy center they historically love to bring in, joining a long line of former No. 1 pick bigs to come to the team -- everyone from Dwight Howard to Shaquille O'Neal.
The thought was that Ayton's pedigree and scoring ability would raise the floor, and that playing alongside Luka Doncic would blow open the ceiling. Every so often, Ayton does erupt for an efficient night and a loud double-double that tricks Lakers fans into thinking he is the answer.
The truth? Ayton has been a disaster for the Lakers on fundamentally every level, and they would be better off just cutting him and playing anyone else at center.
The Lakers have to regret signing Deandre Ayton
Looking at Ayton with an objective stat-based lens yields middling results. He is shooting a career-best 66 percent from the field, a sign that Doncic does still possess the magical ability to make any big man's job easier.
Yet Ayton is drawing just 1.7 free-throw attempts per game, continuing an ongoing problem for Ayton. He is seven feet tall and listed at 252 pounds, a massive mountain of a man, and yet he shies away from contact. He takes bunnies and floaters and push shots instead of powering to the rim. The Lakers get more free throws than any other team, and yet Ayton remains unable to draw any himself.
A cursory question of why that might be looks like it would yield the answer to many of Ayton's issues this year. His rebounding is down significantly from past years. His turnovers are up. His impact on defense is the worst it has been in his entire career; he has never been a rim-protecting force in the middle, but this year the Lakers are 4.1 points per 100 possessions worse on defense when Ayton plays (in non-garbage time).
Deandre Ayton is not fully engaged in playing winning basketball. Whether he cannot or will not, he is somewhat detached, never giving full effort, never giving full physicality. He waste his physical gifts and plays on offense like he's TJ McConnell. And it has meant that the Lakers are better when he sits than when he plays.
That is despite a complete lack of a replacement for Ayton on the roster. Jaxson Hayes was so bad that head coach JJ Redick played with zero centers for entire halves of basketball in the playoffs last season. Ayton was supposed to be the solution. Instead, he has made the problem much worse.
Take as an example the Lakers' game against the Chicago Bulls on Monday night. The Lakers won by 11 points - and yet Deandre Ayton was -15 in his 22 minutes. Jaxson Hayes, on the other hand, was +26 in his time on the court. What Ayton is wasting in terms of size and talent, Hayes is maximizing by playing hard.
Ayton's issues are a rot on the team as a whole, not merely on his own personal play. Redick is calling him out in postgame press conferences and team-only film sessions. In a recent game against the Dallas Mavericks, Ayton was wide open under the rim and wouldn't truly leap into the air to throw down an alley oop from Doncic. His team has to be losing faith in him.
Is the solution trading Ayton? Benching him? Cutting him? Hayes and Christian Koloko are not enough to go to war with in the Western Conference, but it's not possible for the Lakers to make any noise in the playoffs with Ayton in the rotation. He is a black hole on the team and is making the Lakers rue the day they ever negotiated to sign him.
Perhaps things improve. Most likely, however, he will be one of the key reasons the Lakers fall well short of their goals this season.