One of the areas where the Phoenix Suns have quickly and quietly made huge strides this season is in the way they evaluate and add talent to their roster.
Gone are the days of adding big names like Kevin Durant and Bradley Beal at enormous cost. Now it’s all about Jordan Goodwin at the minimum and taking a risk on Mark Williams and his upside.
Deandre Ayton named one of the NBA’s most overrated players
Phoenix has long forgotten about center Deandre Ayton, the defensive anchor of their 2021 NBA Finals roster. These days, he is expected to be the solution to many of the Los Angeles Lakers’ defensive problems.
Not that he answers them on a consistent basis Bleacher Report putting Ayton sixth on their list of the most overrated players in the league today. A bit low perhaps?
Top 10 Most Overrated NBA Players via Bleacher Report:
1. Draymond Green
2. Anthony Davis
3. Zach LaVine
4. Kristaps Porzingis
5. Zion Williamson
6. Deandre Ayton
7. Tyler Herro
8. Jaren Jackson Jr.
9. Kyle Kuzma
10. D’Angelo Russell pic.twitter.com/ZfUKnIsuNR— Hoops Alerts (@TheHoopsAlerts) February 16, 2026
Bleacher Report is clearly looking for involvement to put Draymond Green at the top of this list, but we’re not here to argue about that.
Instead, this is a chance to marvel at the job that general manager Brian Gregory and the front office that existed before his arrival have done in building so extensively on the Ayton experience.
There were missteps, although Jusuf Nurkic has restored some of his own value, with the Utah Jazz being exactly what the Durant/Devin Booker Suns did not needed in the middle.
The Lakers made the same mistakes that the Suns made in recent seasons. When you have superstars, you chase every solution to try to win big, and Ayton’s name brought him to Los Angeles more than his play with the Suns (post-2021) or the Portland Trail Blazers ever did.
Compare that to what happened in The Valley, where the Williams trade paid off and the Suns also have a young center in Khaman Maluach, who if nothing else still has time to flesh out his raw game.
The franchise even managed to find a short-term solution to their Nurkic problem in Nick Richards, before turning him around to save money without getting tangled up with another aging big who is past his prime.
Ayton’s motor will always be questioned and some nights he looks like exactly what the Lakers need to be contenders.
But there’s no consistency in when that guy shows up, a problem the Suns put behind them long ago and which rightly puts him on this list.
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