Deandre Ayton has agreed to a contract with the Los Angeles Lakers, according to multiple reports. As part of the deal, Ayton will reportedly make $34 million next season, per ESPN’s Shams Charania.
The former No. 1 overall pick finds a new home after being bought out by the Portland Trail Blazers — and the Lakers finds a new, hoped-for upgrade at center after the initial rush of signings early in the NBA’s 2025 free-agency period.
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The signing signals another fresh start for Ayton, who turns 27 on July 23, and who first landed in Portland 21 months ago, as the blockbuster deal that sent Damian Lillard to Milwaukee expanded to include the Phoenix Suns, who’d just swung their own massive trade to bring in Bradley Beal, and followed that up by shipping Ayton (and the draft rights to a little-known second-round pick named Toumani Camara) to the Blazers in exchange for Jusuf Nurkić, Grayson Allen, Nassir Little and Keon Johnson.
The move came as something of a sharp rebuke for Ayton, who’d played a key complementary role alongside Devin Booker and Chris Paul in the Suns’ run to the 2021 NBA Finals, and had averaged 16.7 points on 59.7% shooting and 10.4 rebounds per game across his five seasons in Phoenix. But the combination of Ayton’s reportedly rocky relationship with then-head coach Monty Williams, multiple high-profile blow-ups and rumblings of similar strife with other members of the organization, and his persistent inability to play as physically and forcefully as his frame and athleticism suggested he should — all of which had left Phoenix’s front office clearly uncomfortable about giving him the maximum-salaried rookie-scale extension he wanted, leading to him hitting restricted free agency and finding an offer sheet from the Pacers, which the Suns gritted their teeth and matched — led the Suns to decide to cut bait on him as part of their organizational overhaul, viewing “the departure of Ayton as addition by subtraction.”
The Suns didn’t exactly experience that kind of benefit from Ayton’s exit, getting swept out of the first round of the 2024 playoffs and failing to qualify for the 2025 postseason amid the disastrous and short-lived Booker/Beal/Kevin Durant era. But Ayton hasn’t exactly proven them wrong, either, just sort of meandering through two up-and-down seasons on rebuilding Portland teams, with his production largely remaining intact — 15.7 points on 56.9% shooting and 10.7 rebounds in 31.5 minutes per game across two seasons — but his impact largely seeming negligible.
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Ayton had stretches where it seemed like he’d found some rhythm and comfort in Oregon — most notably the latter stages of the 2023-24 season, when he averaged just under 21 points, 12 rebounds, 2 assists and 2 steals-plus-blocks over his final 25 games, shooting 59% from the floor and playing with a level of two-way force that had head coach Chauncey Billups feeling like “we’ve unlocked him. We’re getting the best version of him. He’s been a monster.”
His impact was far less monstrous last season, though. Ayton averaged 14.4 points per game and shot just 66.7% from the free-throw line, both career lows, while continuing his worrisome pattern of, as Adrian Bernecich put it at Blazersedge, matching “his productive and efficient stretches [with] equally noticeable periods of disappointment and, in some instances, visible disinterest.”
After suffering a left calf strain in early February, Ayton never again saw the court in Portland, and found himself outside the future plans of a franchise that drafted UConn center Donovan Clingan with the No. 7 pick in 2024 and Chinese big man Yang Hansen with the No. 16 selection in 2025, while still employing veteran centers Robert Williams III and Duop Reath. The Blazers “had trade discussions with several teams interested in the 7-footer,” according to Michael Scotto of HoopsHype, but couldn’t find any takers while also avoiding taking back any long-term salary; that led to Ayton agreeing to forego $10 million of his $35.6 million guaranteed contract for next season in exchange for hitting the unrestricted market in search of a new team and a “winning situation.”
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Nobody’s ever questioned Ayton’s physical tools: the bulk that can make him a bruising screen-setter and bull-in-a-china shop rebounder; the feathery touch on floaters, hooks and face-up jumpers from the midrange; the 7-foot-6 wingspan and 9-foot-3 standing reach that can make him a plus rim protector and interior impediment; the balance and agility that make him a fluid athlete in space on both ends. What still remains unclear, though, is whether he’s capable of putting them all together with the level of commitment and seriousness of approach that can allow him, and a team that’s not built around him, to make the best of use of all those tools and all that talent.
Seven years after going first overall, a third team’s going to give Ayton the chance to put it all together. Maybe the third time will be the charm.
