The Anthony Davis Unicorn Era may be over, but the Lakers’ AD Era is finally here

The Los Angeles Lakers never needed Anthony Davis to be a unicorn. It could be seemed as they did, in the face of the mythological challenges – the calls to take the torch from perhaps the greatest player of all time, And While he’s about to lead one of the NBA’s most storied franchises – but even the highest ambitions begin with exceedingly practical concerns. What makes LeBron James LeBron James is the fact that he sees the game the way few ever will and makes plays from it that few ever could. But that manifests itself in the fact that LeBron anchors a team day after day and for decades. Not because it is a legend, but an undeniable reality.

Davis, in turn, has become one of his own. The Lakers are a different team with different organizational priorities under rookie head coach JJ Redick. The ball finds Davis in its places and times. If the first action is not taken, teammates wait for AD and search for him again. It shouldn’t be so radical for a team to look to the bigs first, but Davis has been secondary to the Lakers for years – he’s always wavering in focus, sometimes almost incidental to the action. Under the previous coaching leadership, entire quarters could go by without AD receiving a single meaningful grade. No longer.

“He’s going to be there on offense no matter what,” Redick said in an interview with Lakers.com back in July. “He will be introduced. He will have the ball. We talked about him being an offensive centerpiece for us. To me, everyone says, “Oh, Anthony Davis is great on offense, but his real value is on defense.” His real value is simply being Anthony Davis and the fact that he’s a premier two-way player is.”

That’s been true for a long time, if not always so obvious in AD’s approach or the way recent Lakers teams ran their offense. Since arriving in Los Angeles in 2019, Davis has never ranked higher than 12th in points per game — a more modest, less persistent kind of stardom. Davis didn’t force much, instead opting to roll and defend react. He scored most of his baskets because of the playmaking of others. He played his role. This season, Davis is averaging a career-high 31.2 points per night and is competing with Giannis Antetokounmpo for the title. These two have been circling each other for years, in a sort of call and response of what a modern conglomerate should be. Giannis is an exemplary unicorn. His game was revealed the day the Bucks put the ball in his hands and encouraged him to run freely, and since then he has spent much of his career coast-to-coast in a kind of perpetual fastbreak.

Davis has dabbled in this type of expansion, but this season he has reached new heights by adding consistency to his already streamlined game more concentrated. Tighter. Slimmer. More intentional. Redick still wants Davis to shoot threes every now and then, and he’s hardly the first coach interested in exploiting AD’s potential as a shooter. Back in New Orleans, Alvin Gentry went so far as to have Davis run through curls like he was Klay Thompson. The Lakers’ title victory in 2020 – the most significant shooting period of Davis’ career – is undeniable proof that Davis may shooting and a harsh contrast for most of his shoots since then. Davis shot just 35 percent from the field last season, which was one of his goals better Recent jump shooting campaigns. The occasional three-pointer is nice, but for Davis it’s often a passive shot – one that he’s mostly traded this season for racing past his defender and shooting himself toward the basket.

The impetus for turning Davis into a shooter came from his touch and natural mobility. It should work. But why not instead use the same properties to make it move and immerse it in the color? Instead of pushing the limits of what a center can do, Davis and the Lakers are finding better and more varied entry points so he can score in the tried-and-true way: by forcefully working his way to the rim as often as possible. We can – and should – marvel at what makes a unicorn special, but sometimes it really just comes down to horsepower. Davis is not only big and strong, but fast. He will beat an opposition to the point, and once he’s done that, they don’t have much hope of stopping his powerful attack down the field without overwhelming him and sending him to the line.

When Davis appears at the post, he draws fouls. When he runs across the floor, he draws fouls. When he gets unbalanced, he draws fouls. After just nine games, AD has already attempted 102 free throws – the second most in the entire league. But watching Davis at work, it’s no longer a secret where these calls are coming from. Sure, he plays for the Lakers, but more importantly, his sole focus is getting to the basket. Davis is as skilled and coordinated as anyone in the league, a nightmare to defend in space. And whoever is supposed to check it often doesn’t have any rim protection behind them, because She are the rim protection. Good luck to the wings that dare to cross over from the weak side; AD is here to remind them – and perhaps us too – that sometimes life is just an exercise in hopeless cases:

Redick held up his end of the bargain by getting Davis the ball, and Davis did it by exerting himself in a way he never had before. You can see that in AD’s dedication as he rushes to the rim, but even more so in the sheer power of what he was able to accomplish as the centerpiece of the offense. If you were to do a full autopsy of AD’s quietest periods as a Laker — such as the fourth quarter of a crushing playoff loss to the Nuggets in April — you’d find yourself untangling a mess of cause and effect. Obviously, the team wasn’t always organized to suit Davis or itself. But even if the game plan were in order, too many Laker guards saw themselves as the main players on every possession. And even if they did Try to get the ball to Davis, he has found reasons to give it up too many times. He didn’t always fight for position, attack his mismatches, or even smash the offensive glass. The biggest changes this season came in the way the Lakers established Davis in the first place, but also in his willingness to push for it more– insisting on his fame – has allowed the team to rely on him in a completely different way.

Davis played for teams in New Orleans that were supposedly built around him, but they were so flawed and inferior that it hardly mattered. These Lakers are not that. The guards can’t keep a man in front of them to save their lives, and some nights the bench may be empty, but the roster has talent and an internal logic and a clear understanding that Davis is the best player in uniform. The most productive assist combination in the league this season was LeBron vs. AD. This connection is not new; James was always looking for his superstar running mate. But the balance of these connections has shifted. Davis finished pieces by James; Now he makes it possible. Some pick-and-roll with Davis leads with the role, even if the guy with the ball in his hands happens to be the most transcendent creator of his generation. The circle is now closed.

James has been about as good this season as a player just a few weeks away from turning 40 could reasonably be, but there are blemishes in the nightly brilliance that defined him for so long. LeBron can’t do everything anymore, nor should he; The Lakers have a chance to survive if he takes a backseat on offense or literally sits on the bench. It’s telling that the same no longer applies to Davis. There is no acceptable substitute. Jaxson Hayes doesn’t make it. Christian Koloko is just returning to a basketball court. You could stack Gabe Vincent in a giant trench coat on top of D’Angelo Russell, but I suspect they wouldn’t be able to cover the floor as much as AD.

Davis has always been talented, often injured and sometimes inconsistent. Now he is simply indispensable. Every Anthony Davis team ever built has done this needed Anthony Davis, but no Lakers team — and perhaps none of the previous AD teams, period — was The structurally dependent on his presence. James may encourage the players around him, but it is Davis who gives them the opportunity to compete. If AD can’t do the heavy lifting of the attack, it collapses. If he can’t save the entire defense, things will get worse. So much falls to Davis, and so much is at stake every time, say, a wrong finger sends him to the ophthalmologist. The catch with superstardom is that it makes you indispensable. All Davis has to do now is what LeBron has been doing for years: carry the weight, day after day, for as long as he can.