3. Anthony Davis
Yup, Anthony Davis. The same Anthony Davis that most pundits agree is among the best players in the league. The same AD that finished as the runner-up for the Defensive Player of the Year award last season and was All-NBA First Team.
So how can he be underappreciated? Well, the fact of the matter is that even though he is highly regarded throughout the league, he still does not get the love that he deserves. At his best, AD is arguably a top-three player in the league. I’m serious.
Let’s look at some player rankings from around the NBA world to see how Davis is regarded compared to his peers. CBS Sports ranked Davis fifth, Sports Illustrated ranked him seventh, Sportsnaut ranked him fifth.
There are other outlets, such as ESPN, who are on the right side of history and ranked Davis in the top three. However, at the end of the day, players like Luka Doncic, Kevin Durant and even Damian Lillard get more buzz and excitement around them than Davis does.
Heck, the MVP odds this season are more than telling. Davis had the eighth-best odds entering the year to win the award. Granted, some of that is influenced by playing next to LeBron James, but I would argue that we are at the inflection point in their careers where AD has become the better player.
He has gotten off to a slow start for his standards this season while dealing with some nagging injuries and with the team being overly cautious. When he is cooking, though, AD is someone who scores 25 points with 10 rebounds. He can dominate down low, he can work in the post and he can even stretch the floor and shoot the three.
There is not an area on the court that Davis cannot score from. Defensively, he is one of the three best players in the league. He is on the same level defensively as Giannis Antetokounmpo but is much more versatile offensively, and that has shown in the NBA Playoffs.
The stat I keep going back to is win shares per 48 minutes from last season’s playoffs. It obviously is not a perfect stat, but it helps show just ho historically good Anthony Davis is. Davis posted the fourth-highest win-shares per 48 minutes (with at least 600 minutes played) in NBA Playoff history.
Michael Jordan in ’91 and ’96 and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in ’74 are the only ones to post higher than Davis’ .284. And he is still only 27 years old.
Anthony Davis is not just great, he is an all-time great who legitimately could become one of the greatest Los Angeles Lakers of all-time.