Every NBA team spends the offseason trying to fill whatever holes they may have had in the previous season. Well, every team except the Golden State Warriors, who have pretty much spent all summer doing little else but having a staring contest with Jonathan Kuminga. Nevertheless, most teams try to improve, and that includes the Los Angeles Lakers, who have had a huge vacancy at center since trading Anthony Davis for Luka Doncic in February.
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The Luka-AD trade is one you have to make every day of the week, but for last season at least, it created a roster imbalance that the Lakers couldn’t overcome. They did try to trade for Mark Williams at the deadline, but that deal fell through when he failed his physical, and the rest is history, as they were eliminated easily in the first round of the playoffs by the Timberwolves.
L.A. signed Deandre Ayton to a two-year, $16.2 million contract in July, giving them a major upgrade at center. Just how big an upgrade it is could determine how far LeBron James and Luka are able to go in their first full year together. On the latest episode of Byron Scott’s Fast Break, the former Lakers player and coach was joined by Olden Polynice, and they talked through the Ayton fit together.
After being traded by the Suns and later being bought out by the Blazers, Ayton’s reputation as a locker room cancer isn’t exactly befitting of someone who is a former No. 1 overall pick, but Polynice doesn’t think it’s all his fault. “They gave up on him,” he said. “If you draft a guy No. 1, and for whatever reasons, you didn’t cultivate him to make him not be what he ended up being, that’s on management, that’s on coaching, that’s on all those people.”
Scott reminded Polynice that Ayton didn’t go directly from Phoenix to L.A., to which he replied, “I know, and they did the same thing in Portland.”
Scott wasn’t ready to put all the blame on Ayton’s first two franchises, but he thought that being in L.A. playing alongside two superstars could be exactly what he needs to resuscitate his career. “When you got a player that’s done it in a couple of different places, you gotta start looking at the player, too,” he said.
“Now he’s here, I look at him like this. ‘Bruh, you got another breath of fresh air, you got another breath of life coming to you playing with LeBron James and Luka, Austin Reaves and the rest of the Lakers. You better get this s*** right, ’cause this might be your last go-around.'”
Though Scott acknowledged that Ayton hasn’t fulfilled the considerable promise he came into the league with, he thinks he’s a perfect fit for what the Lakers need, and vice-versa.
“You got a guy in LeBron, let’s give him credit too,” Scott said, “You got a guy in LeBron that will demand that out of him, so he’s gonna have to bring his A game this year, but he definitely is a huge pickup for the Lakers this year, no doubt.”
We’re just over a month away from the NBA season starting, and so we won’t have long to see how Ayton actually fits in purple and gold. The Lakers are part of an Opening Night doubleheader on the new-look NBA on NBC, where they’ll host the Warriors.
