It Took Anthony Davis 11 Years To Finally Pull This Off

Anthony Davis finally did this in 11 years. ✅ Sign up to Sorare NBA and get 20 FREE Common NBA cards on me: https://sorare.pxf.io/ALLDAY #nba Anthony Davis just scored 99 points in 2 games. Shaq with a unibrow? This was supposed all supposed to happen a lot earlier. 5 years ago, Anthony Davis finished 3rd in MVP voting at the age of 24. Even he believed that he was the best player ahead of LeBron and Durant. And it wasn’t just him. Analysts, fans, **even you.** When the Lakers won a championship, it was a foregone conclusion, but it never happened. Even in the beginning of this season, somehow the Lakers struggles were blamed on Anthony Davis not being the same dominant player. This was just 3 days ago. Now he’s averaging 18.1 points in the paint, leading the league in rebounding, and has his highest field goal percentage of his career. He was able to go head to head with the most dominant player in the NBA, Giannis, and come out on top. Just a year ago, even when AD was healthy, Giannis made him look like he was moving in slow motion, scoring over double the points 47 to 18. **The idea was that AD was more talented, but didn’t have the same mentality as Giannis.** It almost looked like Anthony Davis gave up **This is the first season that Anthony Davis has embraced being center.** If we take a look at his percentage of minutes played at power forward and center throughout his career, he has primarily played power forward with two of his best individual seasons in 2017 and 2018 when he averaged 28 points a game and nearly won both MVP and DPOY coming when he played nearly 50% or more at the center spot. And this season he’s at 98%. Here’s a chart of his points per 100 possessions at each position by year, it’s clear to see that AD is simply more effective offensively as a center. But even as a center he hadn’t fully committed to it certain seasons. When we think of a center, we think of the tallest player on the floor, a guy who dominates on the inside. Wilt, Shaq, modern day, we go to Embiid, but the NBA has changed. **He’s been an MVP level player before. This feels different.** During the 2020 bubble championship he dominated from the outside and inside. 18% of his field goal attempts were catch and shoot 3s. this year that number is down to 6%. In fact he’s pretty much stopped shooting from the outside all together. He shot 23% from 3 in the past 2 seasons.Maybe he had a wake up call when Nurkic said nah. **All this seems more sustainable.** AD sorta had a problem, he was capable of a whole lot. He grew up playing point guard till sophomore year of high school so he liked to handle the ball, shoot from the outside. It’s why AD be taking the most difficult midranges, fading away, and missing… instead of realizing he’s 6’ 10” with a 7’ 6” wingspan that faster than most forwards. Sometimes when you have a deep bag, you forget your strengths. Sorry BallDontStop. Kobe’s said this about taller guys when talking about Shaq. Now, 72% of his shots are from within 10 feet of the basket, a career high. He only takes 3.6 attempts outside of 15 feet. That’s his lowest amount since his rookie season (4.1). **AD has refused to play center throughout his whole career.** He’s made it known since his Pelicans days. In 2016, the first season he played more minutes at center than power forward, AD said "If somebody asked me, I would definitely say I'm a power forward," "No hesitation.” Even on one of his first interviews as a Laker, he mentioned “I like playing the four. I’m not even going to sugarcoat it. I like playing the four. I don’t really like playing the five ”. “If it comes down to it, coach, and you need me to play the five, then I’ll play the five,” He’s been ultra elite as the pick and & roll man scoring 7 points per game on 68% eFG%. For context, Embiid is #1 scoring 7.5 points on 55% eFG%. He’s also been great scoring off the cut, shooting a 80% eFG%. AD is cutting to the paint more than ever and finishing. He also leads the league in putback scoring and in number of dunks. He’s playing like a true big even with the Lakers not having any spacing. At one point during this streak he went 8 games without hitting a 3. His recent dominance inside has opened up some wide open attempts, which he’s knocking down but now he’s choosing t. We’ll see if he can keep shooting at 40+% from 3. And that’s fair. Prior to 2021, he played in 82% of all possible games. After the bubble, he only played in 50% of games the last 2 seasons looking like he’s having a season ending injury every game.