Redick gives a nod to Ayton despite his postgame frustration.
The Los Angeles Lakers took care of business on Tuesday night, beating the Minnesota Timberwolves 120-106 at Crypto.com Arena to complete a season sweep of one of the Western Conference's top teams.
It was a team effort, but one player in particular caught the attention of head coach JJ Redick in his postgame press conference.
DeAndre Ayton turned in one of his better performances in a Lakers uniform, and Redick wanted to make sure everyone knew how much it meant for the team moving forward.
Redick Highlights Ayton's Two-Way Impact
"It's great for his teammates to see him have a really good performance on both ends of the floor," Redick said after the game.
"It's better for DA to have a game like that against a really good team, one of the best teams in basketball... he was great tonight... It's good for his confidence."
Ayton finished the night with 14 points on 7-of-11 shooting along with 12 rebounds, two assists, and a steal in 34 minutes of action.
With backup big men Jaxson Hayes and Maxi Kleber both sidelined with back injuries, Ayton was the only healthy true center on the roster, and he embraced that responsibility on both ends of the floor.
He was especially effective defensively, helping limit the duo of Julius Randle and Rudy Gobert to just 17 combined points on a night where the Timberwolves shot just 35.7 percent from the field.
A Bumpy Road This Season
It has not been a smooth year for Ayton in Los Angeles, and that is no secret at this point.
The former No. 1 overall pick started the season strong, averaging around 15-plus points and nearly nine rebounds through his first stretch of games while shooting above 65 percent from the floor.
Since then, his production dropped off, and his frustrations with his role boiled over publicly a few weeks ago after a loss to the Orlando Magic when he was heard saying he did not want to be used like a lob-catching center.
For the season, Ayton is averaging 13.0 points and 8.4 rebounds per game while shooting 66.5 percent from the field across 50 games, numbers that look solid on paper but do not always tell the full story of his ups and downs.
Redick has not been afraid to close games with Hayes over Ayton when the effort has not been there, and there have been questions about the Lakers' long-term plans at center heading into this offseason.
Why Ayton Still Matters for the Playoff Push
Even with all the noise, the Lakers need Ayton if they want to make a real run in the postseason, and Tuesday night showed exactly why.
The Western Conference is loaded this year, and the Lakers sit at 40-25, tied for fourth in the standings.
Minnesota, despite dropping three straight and falling to 40-26, is still right there with them in a tightly packed race where every game matters.
When the playoffs arrive, the Lakers are going to face big, physical teams that will challenge them on the boards and in the paint, and that is where Ayton's size and skill set become impossible to replace.
Luka Doncic can carry the scoring load, as he showed with his 31-point, 11-assist, 11-rebound triple-double on Tuesday, and Austin Reaves can catch fire in a hurry like he did with 29 second-half points against the Wolves.
But without a center who can rebound, finish at the rim, and hold his own defensively against elite frontcourts, the Lakers will have a hard time getting past the first round.
Ayton does not need to be a 20-point scorer every night for this team to succeed.
He just needs to play the way he played on Tuesday, setting screens, rolling hard, finishing what his teammates create, and bringing energy on the defensive end.
If the Lakers can get that version of Ayton consistently over the final stretch of the season and into the playoffs, they become a much more dangerous team in a conference where the margin between a deep run and an early exit is razor thin.