When Deandre Ayton signed with the Los Angeles Lakers, he made it clear that he was not concerned about scoring, but rather focused on doing all of the dirty work to help the team win games.
Things got off to a great start as Ayton was holding up his end of the bargain in the first couple months of the season.
His production and attitude have taken a turn for the worse in recent weeks, however, with him recently expressing displeasure with his role, openly saying that he is not a Clint Capela type of player.
Those comments led to a ton of criticism thrown Ayton’s way, especially as his level of play has continued to decrease. Then on Thursday night, Ayton was unfortunately limited to just five minutes of action before leaving the team’s loss to the Denver Nuggets with a knee injury.
After the game, Marcus Smart revealed how Ayton was feeling and came to his teammate’s defense amid all of the recent criticism, via Spectrum SportsNet:
“He’s down. For him, it sucked for him not to be out there. He tried to go and it just didn’t feel right for him. It sucks. We definitely could’ve used him. I know as of lately, he’s been getting a lot of backlash for his effort and play. He understands it. I know it may not seem like it, but he does. And he wants to do good and he wants to help this team. I think that’s what’s more frustrating for him because he’s trying but the way he’s trying isn’t working and he’s still trying to figure it out. But he definitely was down tonight, he just actually left talking to me, saying how he wished he could’ve been out there and how sorry he was. But he can’t control that he couldn’t go and didn’t feel it. Hopefully next game he’s ready to go, we could use him.”
Smart has always been known as a great teammate, so him defending Ayton should come as no surprise.
It remains to be seen how much time Ayton will miss with the knee injury, but the hope is that he will be back soon and can get back to how he was playing at the start of the season. If he can do that, then the Lakers will have a much better chance at making an actual run in the postseason.
Austin Reaves believes Deandre Ayton is X factor for Lakers
Along those lines, Austin Reaves recently discussed how Deandre Ayton is the Lakers’ X factor.
“That guy right there is the X factor,” Reaves told ESPN, gesturing to Ayton. “He changes our ceiling.”
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