Passing Vision
Given Ayton’s dominance throughout the basketball season, he increasingly grew more and more attention from opposing defenses. As the attention grew Deandre Ayton began to face more and more double teams in the post.
According to Synergy Sports, Ayton faced 93 “hard double teams” in post up situations. Out of those 93, Ayton passed out of 57 possessions. When Ayton passed out of the double team in those possessions his team scored almost 1.5 points per possession and scored on 57 percent of the plays.
Here’s how those numbers stack up with other elite big man prospects.
| Name | Possessions | PPP |
| DeAndre Ayton | 57 | 1.49 |
| Wendell Carter Jr. | 34 | 1.08 |
| Marvin Bagley III | 15 | 1 |
| Mohamed Bamba | 19 | 0.94 |
The outlier in number of possessions alone is a huge compliment to Ayton. Even with the other individual stars on Arizona like, Rawle Alkins and Allonzo Trier, Ayton is always the focal point of opposing defense’s every night.
Here’s an example of Deandre Ayton’s high passing IQ out of a double team against Arizona State. In one of the first possessions of the game Arizona comes with a hard-double team on Ayton in the mid post.
Ayton recognizes the double, stays patient, and rockets over a cross court pass to Parker Jackson-Cartwright for an open 3-pointer.