A year after Portland moved on from Deandre Ayton, the Lakers are still dealing with the fallout.
According to ESPN’s Shams Charania, the 28-year-old exercised his $8.1 million player option on Monday, keeping him in Los Angeles for another season. That was the expected move, especially with no real market waiting for him on the open market. The Lakers can still try to turn that salary into a trade chip this summer, but that’s not the same as finding the center upgrade they need.
That’s the bigger issue for Los Angeles: the Ayton bet never really paid off. The team hoped he could rediscover the version of himself it once saw in Phoenix, but last season only offered scattered good stretches. It wasn’t enough to convince anyone that he can anchor the middle for a championship-level team.
Portland, meanwhile, had already made its call. The Trail Blazers agreed to a contract buyout with Ayton exactly a year ago today, choosing to absorb the cost and move on from his $35.6 million salary for the 2025-26 season rather than keep waiting for something better. Lakers fans may have been intrigued when the deal happened last summer, but Trail Blazers and Suns fans had seen this movie before.
Ayton still might open the season as the Lakers’ starting center in October, though that would not be the ideal outcome for Luka Dončić’s sake. Even so, it wouldn’t be a shock if Rob Pelinka lets it play out that way.
Jaxson Hayes, at times, actually gave Los Angeles more than Ayton did. That tells you plenty.
The Lakers signed Dončić to a three-year extension last offseason, with the final guaranteed year running through 2027-28 and a player option for 2028-29. With that kind of commitment in place, the franchise has to make the most of the stunning 2025 trade that brought him to LA. That means finding a center who can do more than Ayton has shown, and preferably someone the team can trust.
For now, Ayton appears set to start. But that situation is not set in stone, and for the Lakers, it shouldn’t be. They do not want to give Dončić any reason to be unhappy, and the signs that Ayton was the wrong answer were already there before this latest decision.
Portland knew enough to move on when it did. A year later, that choice looks even smarter.
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