My coworker brought this up today and I thought he was misreading his statline somehow. Looked at his stat page, and yeah, it really is only five on the year. I already knew he wasn’t one to draw fouls but you’d think you’d at least accidentally draw one shooting foul a game as a starter.
To his credit, he’s hit all five.
Ayton is a tough player to properly evaluate, the Ayton apologist will tell you he is so much better than Nurkic, but just because he is a little bit better than nurkic, doesn’t mean he is living up to being the number 1 overall pick unless you think being the next Clint capela or Jarrett Allen is what you want out of a number 1 overall pick! Ayton isn’t a top 5 player in his own draft class if you were going to redo the 2018 draft, and despite Nurkic not doing much in Phoenix most suns fans don’t want ayton back. But ayton is a solid player who you can win with, and if he made a little less you would be happy with him as your 4 best player on a good team, if ayton was taken around the 8 to12 pick in the first round of the draft you would be happy with his production.
We don’t need him to be the number one pick. We traded a bunch of garbage for Ayton and got Camara as well. We’re ahead of the game. He’s a net positive for us. We just want a solid center that rebounds, blocks shots, and can score in a pinch.