yeah idk wtf is with this. I'd feel super insulted if I were Ayton lol. He's had an unreal progression curve where he's become one of the best defensive/rebounding centers in basketball. He was excellent throughout the playoff run on both ends While his offensive scoring role declined a bit last year with Cp3 on board, he had a massive efficiency boost to up his offensive value. And he's just an upper-tier offensive big tier, something only a few other guys in the league can do.
Right, he was pretty much the perfect third cog in the Suns CP3/Booker wheel as essentially an upgraded version of New Orleans/Dallas Tyson Chandler with outside shooting potential and proved himself to be one of the few bigs capable of fully switching on defense in the playoffs to the point that the Suns were absolutely elite with him on the floor and terrible with him off of it (one-legged Demarcus Cousins absolutely laying waste to their backup bigs in the playoffs comes to mind).
Maybe they've seen something from Jalen Smith in practice that makes them confident that they could survive without DA in a worst-case scenario but there is absolutely no reason for them to do what they just did.
If that relationship becomes completely untenable and the Kings don't make a different big move in the intervening months, I might try to swing a Holmes/Buddy/protected first sign-and-trade for Ayton or something like that if I were Monte.