Forget Marcus Smart, Deandre Ayton’s game was more important

The Phoenix Suns pulled out an upset win over the Celtics on Saturday night, and while Marcus Smart sank 11 3’s for Boston, Phoenix Suns center Deandre Ayton’s game was more important.

When a player like Marcus Smart makes 11 3’s in a single-game (for only the 19th time in NBA history), that kind of a statistics will get a lot of public attention.

However, unlike Devin Booker‘s 2017 70 point game in Boston that overshadowed Phoenix’s loss, Smart’s performance fell in second to not only the Suns’ surprising upset victory, but a fantastic game by second-year center Deandre Ayton.

Ayton finished with 26 points for the second game in a row, the second time in his career that he has dropped at least 25 points in back-to-back games (12/22/18 – 12/23/18 and 12/29/18 – 12/31/18). However, unlike those other five games (including his 26 points at New York), Ayton did so with a poor shooting percentage (he shot 69.0% from the field combined in those games).

Although he finished just 8-22 from the floor for just 36.4%, his second-lowest field goal percentage this season (33.3% on 12/30/19), Ayton shot an impressive 10-11 from the free throw line, reaching double-digit attempts for only the second time in his career (10-14 on 3/2/19).

Of course, Monty Williams, James Jones, and fans of the franchise would love to see Ayton reach double-digit free throw attempts far more often (for the sake of, whatever, Shaquille O’Neal reached double-digit free throw attempts 34 times in his rookie season and 48 times in his season season), although being able to do so in a game as important as the one at Boston, was certainly alone, cause for celebration.

Ayton also grabbed 15 rebounds, to follow up his 21 board game against the New York Knicks, the second time in his career that he grabbed at least 15 rebounds in back-to-back games (18, 17, and 18 on 12/19, 22, 23, 2018 – for memory’s sake, Ayton averaged 25.0 points and 17.7 while shooting 70.8% from the field over those three games).

He blocked two shots, for the third consecutive game, the first time in his career in which he has had a multiple-block game in three straight outings, stretching his blocks-per-game streak (of at least one) to nine, the second-longest of his career (ten games 3/10/19 – 3/30/19).

The Suns are now 7-5 in games in which Ayton has played this season, and the victory against the Celtics was the first victory that Phoenix has won with Ayton in the lineup in which the opponent had a winning-record (27-13 heading into the game) – it happened eight times last year.

The key to taking this fantastic outing against the Celtics is the same as it was following the one against the new York Knicks: follow it up.

Ayton has shown plenty of one-off games in which he has had an above-average statistical game, although it has been rare that they have either been followed up by another great game, or taken it to be the catalyst to an impressive stretch of even four games in a row.

With three of their next four games against teams that Phoenix is competing against for the eighth-seed in the Western Conference playoffs (San Antonio on both January 20 and 24th, and Memphis on January 26), Ayton’s ability to turn these two above-average games against New York and Boston and turn them into a solid stretch of six straight great games (with a match up against the Indiana Pacers in between the two Spurs battles) is a necessity.

He can easily be the primary catalyst (even above Devin Booker) that can carry the team from here.

There are still 40 games remaining in the regular season, more than enough time for Deandre Ayton to continue to assert himself as a dominate force for the Phoenix Suns, the kind of player who can help Devin Booker carry the team to the playoffs.

His game against the Boston Celtics was one of his most impressive of the season, and a more important performance than even that of Marcus Smart. now let’s see if he can do it again, and again.