[The Ringer] Deandre Ayton to the Pacers Makes Too Much Sense Not to Happen

[Part 2]

Ayton isn’t a world-breaking MVP-caliber offensive dynamo like Embiid or Nikola Jokic. In terms of overall impact, he’s probably also a step below the other centers who received All-NBA votes last season—third teamer Karl-Anthony Towns, Bam Adebayo, and Rudy Gobert—though his two-way play and greater malleability could arguably make him a more attractive option in the context of playoff matchups. He compares pretty favorably through four pro seasons to several other bigs who hit the restricted market in recent years—Kristaps Porzingis, John Collins, Jarrett Allen, and 2018 draft classmate Jaren Jackson Jr.—all of whom got deals ranging from $100 million to, in Porzingis’s case, the five-year max. If those guys were worth nine figures, isn’t Ayton?

The counterargument, though, comes in how tenuous such deals can be. The Mavs signed Porzingis to that five-year max to be Luka’s copilot, and after two-and-a-half meh seasons, they flipped him for Spencer Dinwiddie and Davis Bertans and promptly made the Western Conference finals. The Hawks paid Collins after he did yeoman’s work during their run to the East finals, but have seemingly wanted to get off that deal ever since. The Grizzlies inked Jackson and watched him turn in an All-Defensive first team campaign for a Memphis team that pushed the eventual champion Warriors to six in the second round. Now, though, they’re experiencing the downside risk of their $104.7 million investment, waiting for the 22-year-old to work his way back from another extended absence due to a significant leg injury.

The waiting game is stitched into the fabric of restricted free agency. After spending three seasons carving out a niche in the league and demonstrating his value, a player waits to see if the team that drafted him wants to extend his rookie deal. If not, he plays out his fourth season and enters the restricted market; once he’s there, if he signs an offer sheet with another team, his current employer can make the interested suitor wait two full days while deciding whether to exercise its right of first refusal by matching to keep him in-house.

Heading into free agency, Chris Mannix of Sports Illustrated reported “a belief among rival execs” that Phoenix would match a max offer sheet—which could pay him nearly $133 million over four years—if Ayton landed one. No such offer materialized in the opening weeks, though. Predraft rumblings of interest from Atlanta and Detroit fell by the wayside, as the Pistons landed Memphis center Jalen Duren in the first round and the Hawks turned their attention to swinging a deal for Dejounte Murray. (That deal might have removed the cap-space-flush Spurs from the mix, too; a team that just traded its All-Star point guard in favor of stocking its future-draft-pick cupboard doesn’t figure to have much use for a nine-figure center.)

The absence of a huge early offer sheet is par for the course in restricted free agency. Few teams want to have their financial flexibility frozen and hamstrung by an incumbent’s hemming and hawing, so, for the most part, the RFA chase doesn’t really warm up until the unrestricted market cools down. Problems arise, though, when mitigating factors at the top of the market prevent that cooldown … like, say, Kevin Durant requesting a trade and making it clear that he’d like to go to Phoenix, where Ayton represented the likely centerpiece of the most commonly spitballed trade packages that could land KD in the Valley.

And so, Ayton again waited: for the Nets to canvass the league for the best trade offers from every interested party—including those, like Toronto, who might also have separate interest in Ayton—and for the chance to step into whatever comes next, whether it’s more of the same as a Sun or the opportunity to redefine himself, in Indiana or elsewhere.

“I don’t think anybody can really say, ‘He should be this, he should be that,’” Suns assistant coach/big-man whisperer Mark Bryant told Sohi this spring. “Deandre’s gonna dictate what he’s gonna be.”

If what he’s going to be is what he’s just been, and if a shuffled-up Suns roster winds up hoisting the Larry O’Brien Trophy, then Phoenix and its fans likely won’t spend too much time weeping for the memories of Ayton’s time in the desert. But if Jones’s best-laid plans come to naught, the replacement centers can’t replace Ayton’s production, and he blossoms in Indianapolis, the Suns might come to rue the decision to let Ayton walk—and, before that, to make him wait.

/r/pacers Thread Parent Link - theringer.com