Anthony Davis is one of the best big men in all of basketball. When healthy, you can make a serious case that he is the best big man in the game. But over the last two seasons with the Los Angeles Lakers, he has not been the version of himself we saw in New Orleans and in 2020 on the Lakers championship team.
He has battled ankle and lower leg injuries consistently and has not seemed right since those injuries occurred. However, with an entire offseason to get himself right and healthy, Anthony Davis is due for a monster season that tells the league that he hasn’t gone anywhere and is still the same player he has always been.
The Lakers desperately need that version of Anthony Davis to return.
LeBron James may be the leader of this ball club, but Davis is the engine that makes it go. LeBron can only do so much by himself on the court at 37 years old. He needs his sidekick and superstar teammate with him. Now mix in Russell Westbrook if he can fit the scheme Darvin Ham envisions, and the Purple and Gold have something serious cooking in Los Angeles.
But those are all “what ifs” and they need to translate that onto the basketball court and be healthy. Westbrook, James, and Davis only appeared in 21 games together last season.
General manager Rob Pelinka has done an excellent job with the minimal cap space he had to work with on adding younger guys who can help on the defensive end and stretch the floor with their ability to make shots. This should open up the floor a lot more for Davis to be himself and let him enter Isolation mode, where he can size up his defender or make a post move that gets him a bucket.
Anthony Davis can do things most bigs can’t, such as stretch to the perimeter and be effective on both sides of the ball. In addition, Davis is as good as they come on the defensive end when he is healthy. He can make quick cuts and doesn’t have limitations due to ankle injuries, which he hasn’t been able to shake off over the last two seasons.
The thing is, Davis has not been as bad as people portray him to be these last two years when he was on the court, which hasn’t been much. He is still averaging well over 20 points per game and well over seven rebounds per game. It just isn’t the Anthony Davis we are used to. In 2020 which was his best season with the Lakers, he averaged 26.1 points, 9.3 rebounds and 3.2 assists per game.
Davis had a spree in the NBA Finals against the Miami Heat, where he averaged 33.3 PPG and a little over 11 rebounds per game while shooting 63% from the field. He was hitting the three ball, moving quickly and making enticing decisions that worked, and simply dominating a team with a very good interior big in Bam Adebayo.
He needs to get back to the All-star version of himself and be on the court for more than 40-45 games of the season.
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If Davis can play upwards of 65-70 games while being completely healthy by the time the postseason comes around, the Lakers would take that all day compared to what they have gotten in the past. It is safe to say that we should anticipate a much more motivated AD this year.