There was so much worry coming into the season about whether Phoenix Suns rookie center Deandre Ayton would be able to play defense. He wasn’t known as a stellar defender coming out of Arizona, but he was also stuck in the middle of a lazy zone defense, where he had little chance to make an impact on that end of the floor.
For some, especially in the advanced stats section of NBA Twitter, Ayton’s low block percentage in college, without context, was enough to write him off as a bad defender. That was foolish. Throughout the preseason and in his first real NBA game, Deandre Ayton looks like a more than capable defender.