Deandre Ayton Is Taking A Page Right Out Of Zion Williamson's Playbook After Video Surfaces With Him And Katt Leya

Kate Frese. Getty Images.

By all accounts, 2023-24 is a pretty important year for Deandre Ayton (and the rest of the Suns tbh). After all their trades, the Suns are clearly in "win now" mode. They are right in the middle of their title contention window and the overall play of Ayton is going to go a long way in ultimately determining the ceiling of this team. Sure guys like Booker/KD/Beal will get all the attention and pressure, but that doesn't mean Ayton isn't going to have to not only embrace his new role as the 4th option, but also thrive in it. Their roster as it stands today doesn't exactly scream perimeter defense, so Ayton's rim protection is going to be crucial. He's going to have to actually try and be aggressive on the boards. Stuff like that.

Maybe now that the Suns have a new coach who doesn't hate Ayton like poison, that's all going to happen. He's only 25 and talented as hell, so it's not a crazy idea that he's about to have a great season playing with all this new talent.

At the same time, there's also this

Now who am I to turn my nose up at young love? Sure there's always the possibility we're about to see another Zion Williamson situation here, and if you aren't exactly familiar with Katt Leya's work, I suggest you get up to speed. Warning though, don't click on that if you're in your cube.

OK, that was perhaps a little mean. You can find the actual research here.

The internet of course is currently dragging Ayton for this, but I'm not sure why. You can't sit here and tell me you'd be acting any differently if you were in his shoes. Not all of us are as strong as Glenny Balls. You'd cave so fast it would make your head spin. Now you might say the difference is we are normal people and Ayton is an NBA player who signed a $132M extension, but at the end of the day, we're all people. We all have needs and we like what we like. Granted I'm sure he's not pumped about a video like this hitting the internet, but welcome to 2023. Everything hits the internet at some point, just be happy it wasn't a video of the federal crime variety. 

This of course made me think back to the last time we had some Suns involvement with something like this

so it's good to see that even under new ownership and a new roster, some things never change.

Oh, and before we wrap up here, I tried to find the IG pics to close out this blog but I kept getting 404 errors on the back end, so you're gonna have to see for yourself