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Why Lakers are clear but reluctant Deandre Ayton favorite over Warriors, Pacers

Why Lakers are clear but reluctant Deandre Ayton favorite over Warriors, Pacers

Yahooa day ago
The post Why Lakers are clear but reluctant Deandre Ayton favorite over Warriors, Pacers appeared first on ClutchPoints.
In an era where centers are now valued more than almost any other position, a former first overall pick who has averaged a double-double for his career and played in a Finals series is a free agent. He hasn't suffered any major, career-threatening surgeries. He hasn't had any off-court controversies or criminal activity. He's just available, and yet most teams around the league are showing bare-minimal interest, if any at all. The Los Angeles Lakers are considered by most league sources favorites to land him, but mostly because someone has to be.
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Such is the situation Deandre Ayton is facing only five years into his NBA career. Information on Ayton's next team has been hard to come by, mostly because every team considering him is working on things more important to them.
For a short while, the Milwaukee Bucks were seen as a real threat to sign Ayton, but then they waived and stretched Damian Lillard to the tune of $22.5 million over the next five years to be able to sign Myles Turner. Some say they might still be after Ayton, but would he want to go somewhere on a prove-it deal after they just acquired a starting-caliber center?
Following Turner's departure, some wondered if the Indiana Pacers – who once tendered Ayton a multi-year offer as a restricted free agent – might bring him in to help get them through this down year without Tyrese Haliburton. But nope, the response from Indiana has been tepid at best, as they lick their wounds and prepare for a down year.
The Golden State Warriors lost Kevon Looney to the New Orleans Pelicans, so surely they'd be interested, right? Nope. They're considered favorites to land Al Horford in free agency and think Ayton shares a little too much in common with their infamous second overall pick, James Wiseman.
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Outside of some unforeseen secret team lurking in the background – which, in this league, one can never overlook as a possibility – the Lakers seem most likely to bring in Ayton to at least start to fill their gaping hole in the middle of their lineups. But even they are considering other paths, even as the day approaches that Ayton will clear waivers, both in free agency and via trade, according to sources close to the team.
Reporting from Ayton's most recent stop in this underwhelming, perplexing career has been pretty brutal. Jason Quick of The Athletic had this doozie of a graf when describing why Portland cut their losses and bought him out:
'See, the Blazers could live with Ayton missing shots or his man scoring on him. They could even live with him being limited by injuries to 55 and 40 games in his two seasons in Portland,' Quick wrote. 'But in the end, they couldn't live with his bad ways. The tardiness to team flights and practices, according to a team source. The skipping of rehabilitation appointments. Fans saw him slam chairs when he was taken out of games. And a team source said there were tantrums in the locker room when he was sidelined for poor effort.'
Teams in the NBA will look past a lot if the talent is worth the baggage. Jaxson Hayes continued to start for the Lakers last season even after TMZ revealed video of a domestic violence incident between him and his then-girlfriend. Miles Bridges was re-signed in Charlotte to a lucrative multi-year contract after he pleaded no contest to felony domestic violence charges. The list, quite unfortunately, goes on and on.
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What the NBA will not abide is a prodigious talent who thinks the world must bow to his whim without putting in proper work or garnering the expected results, especially when that talent is on an outsized contract. As such, Ayton finds himself not only unceremoniously shown the door by the Blazers, but also has been met with obligatory but not exactly excited interest by teams that have a desperate need at his position. Wherever Ayton winds up, with the Lakers or otherwise, he'll have a ton of work ahead of him to rebuild his reputation around the league, and not much runway with which to do so.
Related: 3 superstars Los Angeles Lakers will target in 2027
Related: Kevin Durant, LeBron James joke about evolution of the NBA
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Pacers president blindsided by Myles Turner's departure: ‘I was shocked'
Pacers president blindsided by Myles Turner's departure: ‘I was shocked'

New York Times

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  • New York Times

Pacers president blindsided by Myles Turner's departure: ‘I was shocked'

INDIANAPOLIS — Social media was how Kevin Pritchard found out. The Indiana Pacers' president of basketball operations had been in contract negotiations with Myles Turner, the team's longest-tenured player, but those negotiations abruptly ended July 1 at 11:07 a.m. ET. That's when ESPN's Shams Charania shared a post on X that Turner had agreed to a four-year, $107 million deal with the Milwaukee Bucks, thus ending Turner's 10-year run with the Pacers. Turner officially signed his contract Monday, shortly before Pritchard met with the media to recap the Pacers' run to the NBA Finals and the dominoes that have already started to fall in the aftermath. Advertisement 'We would have been open on a sign-and-trade because it's sort of mutually beneficial, but we didn't get to that point unfortunately,' Pritchard said. 'I saw Shams tweet it, and that's how I knew that Myles was taken away.' Aside from Tyrese Haliburton rupturing his right Achilles in Game 7, an injury Pritchard confirmed will sideline the star guard for all of the 2025-26 season, the Pacers' biggest personnel shift was the departure of Turner. Pritchard intended for Turner to return on a new contract. He said negotiations with the big man were never acrimonious, and said 'I don't think so,' when asked if Haliburton's Achilles injury affected talks. '(Team owners) Herb Simon and Steven Rales and the Simon family were fully prepared to go deep into the tax and we really wanted to do that,' Pritchard said. 'We were negotiating in good faith, but what happens in this league is sometimes you're negotiating, but because a guy is (an) unrestricted (free agent), he has the right to say, 'That's the offer I want. I'm gonna take it.'' Asked if the Pacers had the chance to match Milwaukee's offer, which would've put the Pacers in the luxury tax for the first time in 20 years, Pritchard sidestepped the question and stated that he thought he and Turner's agent, Austin Brown of CAA, were working toward a deal. Pritchard noted that the Pacers had kept tabs on other franchises that may have had the cap space to sign Turner, but admitted that Milwaukee's ingenuity — or desperation, depending on your perspective — caught them off guard. The Bucks used the waive and stretch provision to waive future Hall of Fame guard Damian Lillard and stretch the remaining $112.6 million of his fully guaranteed salary over the next five years. Milwaukee will incur a dead cap hit of $22.6 million every season through 2029-30, which helped open up enough financial room to take on Turner's hefty contract. The Bucks' dismissal of Lillard marks the largest waive and stretch provision in NBA history. 'I was shocked,' Pritchard said of Turner's departure. 'If I'm being perfectly honest, again, I thought we were kind of going back and forth in an open way. We've done big deals with that agency, and they're great guys and we'll be doing more business with them. But Myles must've heard something in that (Bucks offer) that said, 'I'm gonna take it right now.'' Advertisement Turner was the Pacers' No. 11 pick in the 2015 NBA Draft. The 29-year-old ranks No. 1 in franchise history in blocks (1,412), No. 6 in games played (642) and No. 7 in points (9,031). Turner averaged 15.6 points, 6.5 rebounds and 2.0 blocks per game during the 2024-25 regular season. He shot 48.1 percent from the field and a career-high 39.6 percent on 3-pointers. However, Turner struggled mightily against the Oklahoma City Thunder in the NBA Finals, averaging 10.6 points, 4.4 rebounds and 1.4 blocks across seven games. He shot just 37.7 percent from the field and 21.4 percent from behind the arc. 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Indiana extended a qualifying offer to Jackson worth $6.4 million for the 2025-26 season, a team source told The Athletic. The Pacers also have the right to match any offer Jackson receives from another team, but unless a franchise forks over more money for a largely unproven player coming off a major injury, Jackson will likely remain in Indiana. In addition to discussing Turner's departure on Monday, Pritchard also spoke at length about Haliburton. Pritchard declined to share how his franchise player took the news of Turner joining the Bucks, but Pritchard praised Haliburton for his toughness and selflessness. When Haliburton initially sustained a right calf strain in Game 5 of the finals, Pritchard said the team and Haliburton went through '20 hours of calls and discussions' with doctors and were told that there was 'a low probability' of him rupturing his Achilles. Advertisement Haliburton totaled 14 points and five assists in 23 minutes to help Indiana roll to a Game 6 victory. He followed that up by scoring nine points in the first seven minutes of Game 7 before rupturing his right Achilles. 'How do you tell a kid you can't play in Game 7 after you played in Game 6 and didn't (get injured)?' Pritchard asked rhetorically. '… He's told me many times, and this just shows you what kind of kid he is, 'I would do it over and over.' And if you're asking me if I would have him do it over and over? I would not. If I knew he was gonna get hurt, I would sacrifice that game because I care for the kid so much and I want him to have an incredible career. 'That being said, I have no doubt that he will be back better than ever.' (Image of Myles Turner: Trevor Ruszkowski / Imagn Images)

No. 17 pick Joan Beringer inks rookie-scale contract with Timberwolves
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No. 17 pick Joan Beringer inks rookie-scale contract with Timberwolves

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New York Knicks hire Mike Brown, a two-time NBA Coach of the Year
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New York Knicks hire Mike Brown, a two-time NBA Coach of the Year

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