The reigning Super Bowl MVP walked into the Arizona Wildcats’ locker room at the Pac-12 Tournament last week, and Deandre Ayton appeared to genuinely appreciate that.
“He just played his game and put his team on his back,” Ayton said of Nick Foles, the former UA quarterback who led the Philadelphia Eagles to a Super Bowl trophy last month.
Except Ayton says he doesn’t watch the NFL.
“No,” he said.
Not even the Super Bowl.
“Mmm, nope.”
So what does he watch?
“I play the video game a lot,” Ayton said. “That’s all I do. Play the video game.”
That’s hardly unusual for a college basketball player, of course. What is different about Ayton is the frequency with how he plays video games, the manner in which he plays them and how he translates video games into his real-life dominance on the court. How, basically, Ayton has become an actual video game himself.
On the outside, Ayton has the sort of physical traits that lend themselves to animated extremes: a lean and muscular 7-foot-1-inch, 260-pound frame and a 7-foot-5-inch wingspan. His unusual quickness for that size, deft touch with the ball whether passing or shooting, and solid footwork from years of soccer in his Bahamian youth.
Then there’s what’s inside. That may be best assessed by watching how Ayton plays his two favorite video games: Fortnite, an action survival contest, and NBA 2K, the ever-popular basketball game.
Ayton plays them both religiously, even on game days.
“It’s a ritual. I have to do it,” Ayton said. “Every little opportunity I have. As soon as I wake up, Fortnite or 2K. Breakfast? After film? I’m playing it. I’m playing it.”
But it’s not just the frequency. It’s also who he plays with.
When Ayton plays 2K, he chooses the Golden State Warriors, which obviously makes the game a little easier. Then he turns off the “fatigue” setting, meaning his virtual Kevin Durant, Steph Curry and Klay Thompson never get tired.
To a 2K purist, those choices might appear far too easy. Unfair even.
But maybe Ayton just wants to wipe everyone out, every time.
“Yes, I play with the Warriors. I don’t care,” Ayton said after lighting up the Pac-12 Tournament semifinals with 34 points and 14 rebounds against UCLA last Friday, generating laughter among a small group of reporters. “And fatigue is off, so nobody can stop me.
“I don’t care. I make big shots.”
Here’s what’s also true about Ayton: He’s confident, yet not afraid to reveal weakness.
Ayton admitted he actually had “butterflies” before scoring just 10 points in UA’s Pac-12 Tournament quarterfinal win over Colorado last Thursday, and has no trouble admitting that he’s not Arizona’s best Fortnite player, either.
“I would say no,” Ayton said. “It’s Emmanuel Akot. I get carried by Emmanuel Akot every time we play.”
But when asked during the same interview if he was the No. 1 pick in the June NBA Draft, Ayton didn’t hesitate.
“Yes,” he said. “I play hard every day and nobody has the competitiveness like me. You know what I’m saying? I play hard every day and I got a country on my back that I represent.”
That’s the Bahamas, where Ayton was blowing up even before after he had 18 points and 17 rebounds there in a summertime exhibition game against North Carolina — before he started his sophomore year of high school.
His journey is pretty well-documented since those days: A native of Nassau, Ayton spent a few years at a prep school in San Diego that built a basketball program around him, then two years at Phoenix’s Hillcrest Prep. At Arizona, he’s become the Pac-12 Player of the Year and Pac-12 Tournament MVP; All-America honors are beginning to roll in.
“I doubt if I will ever coach anyone like him again,” Arizona coach Sean Miller said earlier this month. “I don’t mean that we won’t try, but there just aren’t many Deandres walking around.”
He keeps getting better, too, as Ayton proved again Saturday when he followed up his heroics against UCLA by dropping another 32 points on well-regarded USC big men Nick Rakocevic and Chimezie Metu.
“Me and Chimezie tried to do everything we could to just contain him, because I don’t think you’re going to stop a guy like that,” Rakocevic said.
“So we just have to try to do our best to contain him — although he went off tonight.”
Yes, Ayton has gone off a lot this season.
Ayton has already posted 23 double-doubles, the most in a season by any Arizona basketball player ever, and he’s scored 25 or more points on nine occasions. On March 3, Ayton posted the first “20-20” game — 26 points and 20 rebounds — by a UA player in more than 40 years.
Even when things aren’t going well, Ayton is still dangerous. He had 27 points and 14 rebounds in his fourth college game, when the Wildcats were upset by North Carolina State in the first round of the Battle 4 Atlantis tournament.
He does it by quickly soaking up experience and instruction wherever it comes from.
“I remember one time in the Bahamas I showed him the spin move because people would try to cut him off and he wouldn’t change direction,” UA forward Rawle Alkins said.
“So I taught him the spin move literally before the game. He did the move in the game and he was like, ‘Thank you.’ And then from then he started doing a spin move every day and he’s just killing people with it.”
Ultimately, maybe you can attribute Ayton’s production to natural gifts, intensity, instruction .... and video games, of course.
Ayton said he “always” picks up new moves he sees in 2K and tries them out on the court. When Alkins was asked if Ayton really can do that, he laughed and then answered the question seriously.
It’s Deandre Ayton, after all. Why not?
“He’s shown everything,” Alkins said. “I don’t know what else he can do. He’s doing everything. So I guess you could say it’s like a video game.”
