Los Angeles Lakers: Can Anthony Davis win Defensive Player of the Year?

Los Angeles Lakers power forward Anthony Davis stated that one of his goals this season was to win Defensive Player of the Year. How likely can he actually do it?

In an interview with Chris Haynes, Los Angeles Lakers forward Anthony Davis set a number of goals for both himself and the Lakers team as a whole. One of these was his desire to win the Defensive Player of the Year Award.

Now, this isn’t a completely erroneous statement, as Davis is already one of the league’s best big man defenders, but he’s going to have some stiff competition.

As of right now, there are a number of DPOY candidates, such as recent MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo, Myles Turner, Paul George, and Joel Embiid. Oh yeah, there’s also the guy who has won the award the last two years, Rudy Gobert.

First off, Davis’ versatility as a defender has to be brought up, as he can switch seamlessly between power forward and center, allowing him to cover more ground and match up with a wider range of opponents. He also has the length and athleticism to be a capable switch defender, which mitigates the possibility of getting ‘exposed’ by smaller lineups and something that Gobert has often struggled against.

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In terms of regular counting stats, Davis was 2nd in blocks last season at 2.4 per game and 2nd in steals at 1.6 per game amongst all big men. In addition, his BLK% and STL% are both in the 93rd percentile amongst all bigs.

Another important aspect to defense is foul prevention, and Davis averages a 2.6 FOUL% (94th percentile) which is significantly better than Gobert who averages a 3.3 FOUL% (77th percentile).

When looking at the on/off metrics per CleaningtheGlass, in his last two full seasons (’16-’17/’17-’18) opponents have scored -7.0 and -7.5 points less per 100 possessions, which places Davis in the 94th percentile. Not only were opponents scoring less when Davis was on the floor, but their eFG% also dropped by -5.8% and -3.8%, putting Davis in the 97th percentile in this category.

But, as we all know with awards voting, narrative plays as big of a role as performance, and Davis may have that working in his favor. The Los Angeles Lakers finished as the 12th best defense on paper last season, but at times looked worse than that.

This is another reason why Davis has a real shot at winning DPOY this year. If Davis is the driving force behind elevating the Laker’s defense from the middle of the pack, to top-5, that, along with his impressive defensive metrics, will place him squarely in contention for the award.