Suns star Deandre Ayton said he hasn't spoken to coach Monty Williams after Game 7 fallout
Deandre Ayton and Monty Williams, it seems, are still on rocky footing.
Ayton hasn’t spoken with his head coach since they got into an argument during the Phoenix Suns' final game last season, the star center said Tuesday.
He was quick to answer when asked about Williams, too.
“I haven’t spoken to Monty,” Ayton said definitively. “I haven’t spoken to him at all. Ever since the game.”
Now that training camp is underway, that’s going to change soon. Ayton, though, didn’t seem interested in having that conversation.
“I can show him better than I could tell him,” Ayton said.
Ayton and Williams were reportedly feuding during the Suns’ second-round playoff series with the Dallas Mavericks last season. Ayton played just 17 minutes in the Suns' blowout loss to the Mavericks in Game 7 of that series, and Williams was rather coy about why after the game. He said that it was an “internal” matter.
Williams was asked about Ayton's comments later Tuesday, but he didn't want to talk about it.
"To be straight, I'm not going to talk about this anymore because it just doesn't make sense to keep talking about one guy after one game," Williams said, via AZCentral's Duane Rankin. "We lost Game 7."
Ayton and the Suns have reportedly had issues for quite some time. Ayton, according to ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski in May, “did not feel valued” by the organization, which declined to offer him a rookie extension before the deadline. Ayton nearly left for the Indiana Pacers in July as a restricted free agent, but the Suns matched a four-year, $133 million offer to keep him in Phoenix.
Ayton averaged 17.2 points and 10.2 rebounds per game last season, his fourth in the league after the Suns took him with the No. 1 overall draft pick in 2018.
While Ayton showed up to training camp, it sounds like he and his head coach are still not on the same page. And when he was asked if he was happy to be there, he wasn’t convincing.
“Yeah, I’m alright,” he said.
“When I’m in between those lines man, I just work. I’m not playing for myself. I have an organization across my chest and a name on my back I have to represent. I’m just here to work.”
