Deandre Ayton to Miss at Least One Week

Phoenix Suns center Deandre Ayton will miss at least one week with an ankle sprain, according to the team.

Phoenix Suns center Deandre Ayton exited early from Friday night's win over the New Orleans Pelicans after playing just eight minutes.

Ayton suffered a sprained left ankle, and now the team has confirmed he will miss at least one week with the injury.

Phoenix is set to host the Rockets (Sunday), Timberwolves (Tuesday) and the Trail Blazers (Friday/Saturday) at home within the next seven days. 

It's a blow for Phoenix to miss Ayton, especially after he's played well to open the season, doing his part in the Suns' 4-1 start thus far. 

Bismack Biyombo, who played just seven total minutes prior to Friday, stepped up and delivered in the win to the tune of 11 points, 13 rebounds, two assists and two blocks.

Fellow back-up center Jock Landale, who has played majority of the minutes behind Ayton, managed to take a handful of hard fouls on the defensive end of the floor and also scored eight points. He finished with a +/- of +18 last night.

Coach Monty Williams is confident in his depth, offering this to say after the game:

“They just play with aggression. Sometimes you think of aggression, you’re just jacking up shots but I thought the screening was at a high level with Jock (Landale) and Biz (Bismack Biyombo). Defensively, we were scraping at 50-50 balls.

"Torrey (Craig) rebounding. Landry (Shamet) fighting over screens, like those kinds of things for that group can help them have 50+ points, which isn’t typical of that group, but I just told them that tone of aggression that they set, like that’s a bar that we expect from them and they’ve been in the gym post practice, pre practice getting after it. 

"Before and after practice is over, like going over a lot of stuff because we’ve added some guys to the rotation and so they’ve had to do some extra work to get everybody up to speed but I thought the intensity from that group was at a high level.”

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