carey wrote: ↑Sun Jul 10, 2022 11:12 am
Mori Chu wrote: ↑Sun Jul 10, 2022 11:01 am
I think we've all made our arguments about Ayton and aren't going to convince each other at this point. It looks pretty likely that he'll be leaving, so maybe it is a moot point. I will be sad to see him go. I think I can see the argument that he is not worth the 5-year max.
But I feel like the rhetoric here lately is acting like he is trash, a bum, not worth much at all. Maybe it's because we can see the writing on the wall that he is out of here soon, so we want to turn on him and focus on the negatives.
Can you find me even one post of anyone saying that?
Here are a few examples that IMO imply that Ayton is not a very valuable player, not worth much. All of these examples come from this same thread. Names stripped out because I want to focus on the words and not the messengers:
- Saying that Isaiah Thomas was better than Ayton:
IT was absolutely better than Ayton. He finished 5th in mvp, was All-NBA 2nd team and we dumped him for a late 1st. We’d have to trade Ayton for a 2nd for it to be comparable.
- Calling Ayton a "quarter" rather than a "dollar"
He’s a quarter that wants to be paid like he’s a dollar.
- Calling him "soft":
He can't hold his own...he's soft... [...]. Is our lineup sufficient without some changes or improvement to compete? I point to the Mavs round 2 series w/us...clearly...no.
- Saying that Ayton isn't the "kind of C" who wins chips or gets to the Finals (despite Ayton being the starting center on a 2021 NBA Finals team):
We also see what kind of Cs are winning chips and getting to the finals. He just isn’t valuable like that anymore.
- Saying that Ayton "doesn't take the real NBA seriously":
He can't even be bothered to get a good night's sleep at the expense of being a legend in NBA2K. He needs to learn to take the real NBA seriously before his salary demands are taken seriously.
- Saying he "doesn't have it upstairs":
He doesn't have it upstairs. Every deficit in his game can be traced back to his mental approach. That stuff doesn't change mid-career and surely not if he's on a max-contract because at that point, in his mind, he's already made it.
- Saying Ayton doesn't work on his game and hasn't gotten better:
We asked Ayton to focus on finishing and setting picks. So yeah, he had insane field goal percentages, which made it look like he was getting better, which he wasn't. And again, Ayton has blame in this too. He isn't exactly working on his game the way Book did in the awful Ryan years.
There are more such quotes, but I limited how far back I dug in the thread. I admit that I am grabbing some of the strongest anti-Ayton statements, but I do think the talk about him overall has skewed very negatively and doesn't seem to include much room for options where keeping him would be a good idea or helpful to the team.