The last time Deandre Ayton was assigned to defend wings and guards, he was a freshman at the University of Arizona.
“I don’t think I ever saw a [7-footer] in the Pac-12 conference,” Ayton said.
After battling with arguably the two best bigs in basketball, Nikola Jokic and Anthony Davis, in the first two rounds of the playoffs, Ayton had a new task Sunday against the LA Clippers in Game 1 of the Western Conference finals: Defend on the perimeter against center-less lineups that just exploited Rudy Gobert, the three-time Defensive Player of the Year.
Round 1 of the big-small chess match went to Ayton and the Suns.
