Deandre Ayton admits Lakers may have ‘underestimated’ Hawks

Saturday’s game against the Atlanta Hawks looks like it should have been an easy win for the Los Angeles Lakers at first glance. The Lakers headed into the contest on a five-game winning streak and the Hawks were without arguably their three most talented players — guard Trae Young, forward Jalen Johnson and big man Kristaps Porzingis.

Still, not only did the Lakers’ winning streak come to an end on Saturday, but they got blown out by the short-handed Hawks. They lost by 20 points, and that marked their largest margin of defeat in a game this season. After the game, center Deandre Ayton admitted that the Lakers may have “underestimated” their opponent.

“Really probably leaving those guys underestimated and not keeping those guys accountable, forgetting about them,” he said. “This is the NBA and those are NBA players. They deceived us a little with their shotmaking. Seeing the scouting report and the clips they’ve had from their previous games, that film was not showing what was out there. That’s how it is in the NBA, it’s one of those nights where you really need to lock in and dial in and I feel like we were just behind the ball a little bit and they killed us in transition and they played amazing defense. We weren’t ready for it and J.J. [Redick] really got on us about being ready for the next game.”

Without a lot of their star power, the Hawks beat the Lakers by committee on offense and put together a brilliant display of team basketball.

Seven players in total for the Hawks reached double digits in scoring, led by 21 from forward Mouhamed Gueye, who’s been a consistent member of their rotation this season. Guard Dyson Daniels was a great primary playmaker in Young’s absence as well and responsible for a lot of Hawks players having standout performances, considering he totaled a career-high 13 assists.

While the Hawks looked like a well-oiled machine on offense, the Lakers really couldn’t get anything going on that end. Los Angeles has been able to rely on guard Luka Doncic to carry the scoring load this season, but he had his lowest point total of the campaign on Saturday. He finished with 22 points while shooting just 7-of-17 from the field.

Ayton didn’t step up his play as a scorer in Doncic’s off game, either. He converted all five of his shot attempts from the floor but simply wasn’t aggressive enough, as he tallied just 11 points in the contest.

The Lakers will take on the Charlotte Hornets next, who aren’t exactly intimidating, but hopefully they learned their lesson from Saturday’s contest and won’t underestimate their foe once again. Charlotte has a record of just 3-6 on the season and lost each of its past two contests.