Put Some Respect on Anthony Davis' Name
The Los Angeles Lakers were on national TV Wednesday. They lost, 125-110, to the Sacramento Kings. They were at home.
And Anthony Davis had nine points on 3-of-9 shooting.
The performance led to a predictable (and mostly understandable) wave of reactions and jokes on social media. The next morning, ESPN's Stephen A. Smith fired up his hot-take cannon to say, "I don't know if Anthony Davis can handle being in L.A." In the same segment, Brian Windhorst called the performance "unacceptable."
And to be fair, on that specific night, AD wasn't good enough for the Lakers to beat the Kings. He knew and acknowledged that in the immediate aftermath of the game.
But every time Davis has a performance like this, the reaction might lead you to believe they happen all the time, that Davis can't be the second-best player on a title team or that L.A.'s struggles are somehow tied to him.
None of that, at least from an objective, provable perspective, is true.
Regarding the regularity of nights like this, it was his second game of the season with a single-digit scoring output (which may be too many). What you may not know, especially after Wednesday, is that he also has seven games with a 20-plus game score ("a rough measure of a player's productivity for a single game."). Only Nikola Jokić and Luka Dončić (nine each), Jayson Tatum, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Kevin Durant (eight each) have more such games this season.
On his place in L.A.'s pecking order, we're just over three years removed from the Lakers winning a championship with Davis as a No. 2. Injuries have long been an issue for him, but he's still just 30 years old. Presumably (and the numbers you'll see in a bit back this up), he's still in his prime and has some time left there.
Pinning the team's underwhelming start on him is also far from fair. AD's 1.6 wins over replacement player (value over replacement player times 2.7) is tied for 15th in the NBA. And Gabe Vincent, Jaxson Hayes, Taurean Prince, Christian Wood and Max Christie have combined for minus-2.2. Austin Reaves, who's shown signs of life over the last couple weeks, has seen his scoring efficiency fall off a cliff.
Davis can be better, sure. But the rest of LeBron James' supporting cast should shoulder much more of the blame.
In a vacuum, Davis' 2023-24 campaign has been good to great.
He's averaging 22.1 points, 11.6 rebounds, 3.5 assists and a league-leading 3.4 blocks. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (who did it three times) and Hakeem Olajuwon (who did it twice) are the only players in league history who matched or exceeded all four of those marks for entire campaigns.
And these aren't empty numbers. The Lakers are being outscored when Davis is on the floor, but the margin is even worse when he sits.
Now, none of this is to say that AD or his young 2023-24 campaign are infallible. On most nights, getting nine points from him isn't enough. And again, he knows that.
Nagging injuries, like the hip issues Davis referred to in the clip above, are probably going to follow him through much of the season. If it's not the hip, it could very well be something else. That's just part of the equation with AD.
The jump shot that helped L.A. win the title in 2020 probably isn't coming back either. He's never been close to a league-average three-point percentage in the regular season, and his 2023-24 effective field-goal percentage (which gives shooters credit for the extra point threes give you) is slightly below average right now.
AD isn't a perfect player. There probably isn't one (nor has there ever been). But he's still top 20 to 25. If he can get and stay healthy, he might be able to sneak back into that top 15. Heck, there's an argument he was top 10 as recently as last season, even with the 26 games he missed.
With LeBron playing the way he is (and as an aside, the level he's at in his 21st season is just absurd), that should be enough to contend. It was this past summer (depending on your feelings about the competitiveness of the Western Conference Finals sweep).
The problem is that Reaves isn't the third star many expected him to be. Or at least he isn't right now. This offseason's reshuffling of average or below-average role players (out with Malik Beasley, Dennis Schröder, etc. and in with Gabe Vincent, Taurean Prince, etc.) isn't working either.
With the exception of a high-profile off night here and there, Davis is doing his job. The rest of the roster and the front office that assembled it (and can still rework it) are the bigger problems.
