EL SEGUNDO, Calif. — Deandre Ayton quickly made his way in front of the banner, behind the microphones, and enthusiastically wished the media, “Good morning.”

Ayton seemed like he was in a great mood Thursday, and why wouldn’t he be? The Los Angeles Lakers had just finished practice before hopping onto a plane to Houston with a 2-0 first-round series lead over the Rockets. And Ayton knows he’s had a major hand in his team winning its first two playoff games.

“It’s been fun,” Ayton said with a grin. “I’m not gonna lie.”

After Game 1, it was easy to see how Ayton was helping; the final stats made it obvious that he was the most dominant big man on the court. Matching up with Rockets All-Star Alperen Şengün, Ayton opened the series with 19 points and 11 rebounds.

In Game 2, though, maybe you needed to search a little harder. Ayton went just 3-of-8 from the field, his eighth-worst shooting game of the season. He grabbed only five rebounds, and the Lakers were outscored by five points during his minutes.

But counting stats aren’t really the thing for Ayton — at least not the only thing. His role in the Lakers’ defense has been critical, with his versatility on switches and mobility in scrambles out of their traps serving as key ingredients in their defensive game plans. And with the Rockets continuing to pressure the glass after every attempted shot, possessions that end with any Laker player getting a rebound come with credit due to the other four players on the court boxing out.

“It’s really just multiple efforts. People say second-chance effort, but it’s like multiple efforts in the same possession. Houston, they load that up, you know, they keep possessions alive being on the glass,” Ayton said. “And that’s where your heart really has to kick in and just mano a mano, really boxing out your guy and closing the possession out. Just to get in our offensive rhythm. And matching their physicality takes a whole group and team.

“I just feel like we (are) super locked in out there where we know, in detail, the shot goes up, finding a man, finding a body, closing the possession, get on the break.  That’s been the intent, sense of urgency, to close out possessions.”

The Rockets have 38 offensive rebounds in the first two games and have taken 44 more shots than the Lakers. But Los Angeles has been way more efficient with its possessions and is on the cusp of having Austin Reaves return from his strained oblique injury. The team upgraded Reaves to questionable for Friday’s Game 3, which comes 22 days after he suffered the injury in a loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder.

It’s been a strong enough start for Ayton in his first trip to the postseason since 2023 with the Phoenix Suns. The Lakers have held the Rockets under 100 points in consecutive games.

“We love giving DA praise,” Lakers coach JJ Redick said on Thursday. “We love to give him — I mean, when he does what we ask him to do, he should get all the praise in the world. Again, he’s the former No. 1 pick, and he’s doing a lot of thankless work at times, so we always praise him for that.”

The thankless work from Ayton and backup Jaxson Hayes has been critical this season after the lack of center play last postseason led to Redick benching Hayes in favor of exclusively playing small lineups late in the Lakers’ first-round loss to Minnesota. This year, Redick has identified his bigs as the players who raise the team’s ceiling the highest.

While Ayton finished Game 2 on the bench in crunch time, it was simply because Hayes had played so well in his minutes.

“(Ayton’s) been a big key in both these games. Defensively, I thought (he) was really good in the second half of Game 2 and had played a ton down the stretch — or to start the fourth, he had had a really long run,” Redick said. “And that was during a stretch where there wasn’t a lot of dead balls. I told him I was going to get him out real quick, get him back in, and then Jaxson just played great. DA and I had a conversation today, like, ‘You didn’t do anything wrong, it’s not the reason you didn’t finish the game.’ It was just a group out there was winning, and Jaxson was doing a great job.

“But we can’t win at the level we want to win without those two guys playing great.”

That responsibility has Ayton feeling inspired — but not at all accomplished.

“I mean, LeBron (James) is making it very known not to get comfortable, and JJ as well, so don’t get too complacent,” Ayton said. “This is the playoffs, you know? Anything can happen, man. You know we want to handle business just like how we handled business here at home. And you know, (keep everything) solid, and we take the stuff we did in the lab over there to Houston.”