Deandre Ayton has his fresh start and the Los Angeles Lakers have their new featured big man.
The former No. 1 overall draft pick was formally introduced in Los Angeles on Tuesday after signing a two-year, $16.6 million deal in free agency following his buy-out with the Portland Trail Blazers. Judging from what he said, he’s more excited about what he can do with the Lakers. Specifically, he can’t wait to play with Luka Dončić. From ESPN:
“This feels like a video game, like somebody set it up,” Ayton, decked out in an all-black suit, said at his introductory news conference. “This is an opportunity that I won’t take for granted. Luka is a once-in-a-generation player, and I’m happy to be his teammate. Hearing about the kind of shape he’s been in, he’s super ripped, and I’m finally glad to be on his side.”
There have been rumbles nearly all offseason about Dončić slimming down. The Mavericks’ concerns about his conditioning was one of the main narratives out of Dallas following the trade that rocked the NBA, and he has now reportedly dropped “significant weight.”
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Ayton has faced somewhat similar criticisms during his two seasons in Portland, though more about his on-court effort than fitness. The Lakers now offer him a chance to show he can be a dynamic player on a team with a path toward contention, and Ayton didn’t deny it will be a different environment, via ESPN:
“I feel like the Lakers were the best position [for me],” Ayton said. “They want to win a championship right now, and I want to win right now as well and just be part of a winning legacy and be around winners. … The last two years was just a different route for me and I just learned a lot that when you don’t win in this league, you can be forgotten.”
With Dončić and LeBron James, Ayton will be playing with two of the best ball distributors of his career. He’s looking forward to the experience:
“They both average about nine assists over their career span,” Ayton said. “They turn [their teammates] into superstars, they make them bigger than their roles, they make them very important on the floor.”
Of course, it’s not entirely guaranteed James will be there. The future Hall of Famer’s future in Los Angeles is cloudy and there’s a non-zero chance the Lakers send him elsewhere to focus on building around Dončić.
