Trade Ayton, Grant to Bucks and give back one of the “swaps” of their choice for Damian Lillard 2025/26, Portland pursues the injury exception and Dame becomes an assistant coach for next year and returns in 26/27 as 6th man or starting PG if Scoot doesn’t pan out. This leaves the Blazers on a hunt, a mission, For a PF enforcer type. A rebounding monster. A Buck Williams, Maurice Lucas…..
lol...yeah, Ayton will help the Lakers as much as he helped Portland. Which is not much at all. Laker defensive rating with Doncic was worst in the league; more than 5 points worse than with AD. Ayton won't help their defense the point is to get rid of him; good riddance; keep Chancey from starting him and playing him 30 minutes a game. Remove any temptation Cronin may have to re-sign him. Addition by subtraction; clear the path for Clingan and Yang
That was 5 seasons ago and subsequent seasons showed that the engines that drove the Suns to the finals were CP3, Bridges, Johnson, and Crowder; not Ayton (imagine that: 3 wings) last season, when the Blazers were trying to win, their record with Ayton was 17-23; their record without him was 19-23. That is the opposite of a finals-worthy impact
He might be a little overrated, and he might have been an older rookie, but he was still just a rookie last year who shot 38% from three.
16 pts 12 boards that year. He helped. What he did in Portland is irrelevant to the topic. We are talking about whether he can help a playoff team that has no center. Not a team that tanked.
