Deandre Ayton and the Suns are earning their respect
Deandre Ayton sported the words “Respect Us” on the back of his jersey in the NBA bubble last season in hopes that people will one day embrace others from different backgrounds. But the Phoenix Suns center also used “Respect Us” as a message to other teams around the NBA.
This season, the Suns have been one of the NBA’s top teams. Most of the attention during their rise in the West has been given to star guard Devin Booker and Chris Paul's arrival l, but Ayton deserves credit as well.
The No. 1 pick in the 2018 draft from Arizona is averaging 10+ points and 10+ rebounds in 30.7 minutes per game this season. He also has the third-most screen assists in the NBA. But Paul believes the best is yet to come for the Bahamas native.
“D.A. is full of personality. If you’re around him, you can’t help but to love him because of his energy and how good of a person he is,” Paul said. “I think myself as well as Jae [Crowder] and ‘Book,’ all of us are showing him what it takes to make it to the next level.
“It is one thing to be an outstanding player, but when you want to be elite, you got to bring it every night. You got to make sure they talked about you on the scouting report, and it’s really, really hard. But I think he is more than capable, and it’s great to be a part of this process with him.”
Heading into April, the Suns sat second in the Western standings, but bookmakers are still hesitant to put faith in them. Sitting +900 to win the Western Conference in the NBA betting on bet365, the Suns don’t have the playoff pedigree of the other teams around them, where the Los Angeles Lakers and Clippers, Utah Jazz, and Denver Nuggets have all made deep playoff runs in recent years. Unlike those teams, however, Phoenix has stayed healthy all season, putting them in a position to seize a high seeding and home-court advantage through multiple playoff series.
After Monday’s win for the Phoenix Suns over the Houston Rockets, they’ve got a back-to-back against the Utah Jazz and Los Angeles Clippers, two of the Western Conference's best teams. That’s a good thing for the Suns for various reasons, one of them being their insistence as of late to put away bad teams before it gets unnecessarily chaotic in crunch time.
With playoff basketball secure, the next question is how resilient this Suns team is. As a potential high seed, they could face any of the teams scrapping for the play-in tournament in the Western Conference's basement, possibly Luka Doncic’s Dallas Mavericks or the Golden State Warriors under Steph Curry, who always turns up in the playoffs. This is where Ayton, too, will need to step up his game in his first career playoff appearances and where the veteran presence of Chris Paul could be invaluable.
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