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“That damn Deandre Ayton,” Smith said on Monday’s “First Take. “I mean, this dude. I bring up the fact that he\u2019s from the Bahamas and people say, ‘Why you keep bringing that up?’ I said because he plays 50% of the time as if he\u2019s lounging on the beach. That\u2019s how he plays. You see the frustration on the faces of the Lakers.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
“It\u2019s embarrassing. It really, really is because he\u2019s not a scrub. He\u2019s got skills, but the effort is so minimal. The absence of urgency is so flagrant, it breeds frustration.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
“He\u2019s he kind of guy that if you\u2019re the Lakers, you almost have to get him out of your locker room, just because of the effect that he will have on the other guys because of this flagrant lack of urgency that he plays with.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Through the first three games, Ayton has not been a major factor for the Lakers. He’s averaged 7.7 points and 9.3 rebounds, which is a significant drop off from his first-round averages. Against the Houston Rockets, he put up 11.8 points and 10.8 rebounds.<\/p>\n
JJ Redick Still Believes in Deandre Ayton<\/h2>\n During the Lakers’ practice on Sunday, coach JJ Redick did not speak badly of Deandre Ayton. Amid the mediocre performance from the starting center, Redick still believes that Ayton can be a significant part of the team’s success.<\/p>\n
“Look, I\u2019ve been around DA for a season now,” Redick said. “I know how special he is for our group to succeed. And I told him this morning, I said to him in the Houston series at one point he was the big part of the reason we were winning the series. He was a big part of the reason we won the series. I believe in him and he\u2019s going to help us win tomorrow.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Redick has not lost his trust in Deandre Ayton. However, he needs to play well against the Thunder in Game 4 if they want to keep their season alive.<\/p>\n
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\nEdited by Reign Amurao<\/span>\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\nSource link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Longtime ESPN analyst Stephen A. Smith issued some harsh criticism of LA Lakers center Deandre Ayton on Monday. The Lakers are on the verge of being swept in the Western Conference semifinals against the OKC Thunder. The defending champions have a 3-0 lead and could advance to the third round if they win in Game […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":242936,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6806],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-242935","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-gossip"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242935","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=242935"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242935\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/242936"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=242935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=242935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=242935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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