Ed Davis is a Diamond in the Rough
As everyone is well aware of at this point, the Los Angeles Lakers are an absolute mess. Going into this season, the team was banking on the worn our legs of a 36 year old Kobe Bryant, who was coming off of two season ending injuries and 41-year-old Steve Nash, who has had nothing but injury problems since joining the team. To top it all off, the team had just lost Pau Gasol and didn’t have a big name to replace him, unless you count the aging Carlos Boozer to be an adequate replacement.
The team slowly built the bench unit up with some low key, but quality signings and draft picks. Notable among the new bloods: Jordan Clarkson, who is having a very nice season as a rookie, and Ed Davis.
Davis has been around during his career. Starting off in Toronto, Davis showed some solid promise with the Raptors, but he was always seen as a bench player. And maybe that’s fair; after all, Davis tends to have his best performances off the bench. His skill set is best suited to be a role player rather than a main cog to begin with, so why not continue to roll with that? Luckily, Byron Scott recognizes Davis’ value off of the bench and has kept him there for most of the season.
We knew the team wouldn’t have a whole lot to get excited about this year. Between the injuries and the scarce amount of talent on the roster, this team just didn’t have players to watch. Sure, we could always watch Nick Young jack up hilariously awful field goal attempts and somehow make 36.6 percent of them. But as entertaining as Swaggy P is, he isn’t really a player you want to look forward to. Despite only being a role player, Davis is a player that we can all watch.
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Davis has been one of the very few bright spots on this team. Without a doubt, Davis has been one of the team’s top 4 players and has helped anchor the second unit. Davis may have been the best signing the Lakers had this past off-season.
Ed Davis, despite being a role player, leads the team in several key statistics. First off, Davis is the leader in Player Efficiency Rating with a very good 19.5. His Win Shares per 48 minutes is a very good .165 and his total Win Shares is 5.0, both of which lead the team. That’s impressive, especially considering that Win Shares are accumulative and largely depend on the amount of time a player spends on the court.
He will never carry a team to championship glory, but not everyone can be like Mike. You have to have role players who are willing to do the dirty work in order to win. You have to have a balance and Davis is the perfect player to help achieve that. Unfortunately, the Lakers are currently well stocked in role players, but are empty in the star player department, despite the best attempts of a mummified Kobe Bryant.
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Obviously, Davis is not the kind of player to build around, but that doesn’t mean that he can’t be a key part of the team going forward. He is currently signed to a very cheap contract and has a player option for next year. I highly doubt Davis will take that option with how well he has played this year, but that doesn’t mean he can’t come back next year on a similarly cost-effective deal to help anchor the bench for Los Angeles.
This has been an extremely rough season, for both the team and the fans. It’s tough to consistently watch the team play hard but ultimately lose every other night. It’s difficult to see Kobe Bryant get hurt for the 3rd year in a row, as his future is certainly in question. Despite all of this, there’s bright spots to look forward to. The rise of Jordan Clarkson will be captivating going forward and it will be interesting, if a little bit terrifying, to see how well Julius Randle bounces back next year. But for this year? This was the year of finding great value out of nothing and that’s exactly what Ed Davis was. A true diamond in the rough.