Deandre Ayton plays well, Suns beat another shorthanded Lakers squad

PHOENIX — As the Phoenix Suns’ second half of the season starts turning into jostling for playoff positioning and improving on the way to the postseason, the Suns achieved both on Sunday in a 111-94 win over the Los Angeles Lakers.

In a turn of good fortune, the Suns got two games against the Lakers in March without Anthony Davis (calf). Los Angeles didn’t have LeBron James (ankle) on Sunday, either. This allowed the Suns to clinch the tiebreaker over the Lakers with two straight wins.

Phoenix at 28-13 is now a full game up on 28-15 Los Angeles in the standings, a gap that should only expand the longer Davis and James miss time.

On the improvement front, Deandre Ayton has needed a strong bounce-back game offensively for a while now and he got it.

Ayton was assertive in taking a dribble or two with mismatches to set up his strong touch on hook shots. While he was still fumbling too many passes, he remained present on rim runs and dunked home a few lobs from Chris Paul and Devin Booker.

The only true big the Lakers played was the undersized Montrezl Harrell, who struggles in ball screen coverages. Ayton took advantage most of the night.

✔️ 10K career assist
✔️ DOMINAYTON@CP3 ↪️ @DeandreAyton pic.twitter.com/4u9nU8q5vY

— Phoenix Suns (@Suns) March 22, 2021

That finish was for Paul’s 10,000th assist, making him only the sixth player in NBA history to reach that number.

Ayton had 26 points on 10-of-13 shooting, the most he’s produced since Jan. 22. His seven trips to the foul line were the third time this season he’s reached that number. The defense out of Ayton was there as well, adding up to an all-around great performance and his best in a few weeks.

While there wasn’t much of an onslaught or momentum surge on either side, the Suns were the handlers of the game throughout. The Lakers never led and the Suns did by five after one quarter before extending that to 15 at the half.

Booker was locked in after one of his worst games of the season on Friday. He scored 26 points on the night, with 14 of those coming in the first half where he established the tempo. The sixth-year guard added nine rebounds plus four assists.

The Lakers showed their championship DNA by hanging around for the most part. The lead was cut down to 10 in the late third quarter before getting as close as seven in the mid-fourth.

That’s where Paul got into a little older brother putting the younger brother in place battle against former teammate Dennis Schroder.

After Paul received a technical foul for a whistle drawn by Schroder that got that advantage to seven, Booker scored on a layup before Paul blocked Schroder’s shot. Paul then assisted Jae Crowder’s 3, recorded another steal and assisted an Ayton shot near the rim. That put Phoenix up 14 with 4:22 left and iced it.

The Suns shot only 28% from three-point range but hit high marks on 2s (60%) and held the Lakers to 41.2% shooting.

“We’ve been saying the whole season that if we can rely on our defense we’re in pretty good shape,” Booker said. “We’ll take care of the other end of the floor. We defended at a high level tonight.”

Paul had his first triple-double as a member of the Suns with 11 points, 10 rebounds and 13 assists.

Cam Johnson returned in his first action since March 4 due to health and safety protocols. He converted on three of his four shots for eight points in 16 minutes.

The Lakers got 22 points from Schroder, a team-leading 23 via Montrezl Harrell off the bench and 17 more from reserve Talen Horton-Tucker.

The Suns have had their fair share of poor performances against bad teams this year, but they’ve also played their best when they play against the best.

That makes it somewhat disappointing they haven’t gotten the Lakers at full strength yet and it’s something that’s been happening often during a strange and unpredictable season.

A quick scan of the Suns’ schedule shows that outside of an early-season win against the Utah Jazz and arguably their best game of the season at home against the Philadelphia 76ers in mid-February, they’ve been beating great teams missing a key piece or two.

That speaks to how healthy Phoenix’s top players have stayed, with Paul, Booker, Ayton and Mikal Bridges avoiding any serious stretches out due to injury or health and safety protocols.

They’ve beaten Portland twice without C.J. McCollum and Jusuf Nurkic, Milwaukee once missing Jrue Holiday, Denver exlcuding Michael Porter Jr. and the Boston Celtics minus Jaylen Brown. There was also the loss to the Brooklyn Nets when they didn’t have Kevin Durant or Kyrie Irving.

Obviously, there’s nothing the Suns can do about this. They are beating the teams presented to them. It would certainly, however, benefit them as a team to come across the level of play they’re going to see in the postseason and get tested by it more. They got that in some of their victories, including the one against the Bucks.

And the schedule is going to pick up. April is the most difficult on the slate. Outside of a torrid run of losing, that’s going to be great for the Suns to keep getting better before mid-May.

Follow @KellanOlson