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. Maybe it has seemed just as they did, given the mythological stakes involved – the calls to seize the torch from perhaps the greatest player who ever lived, and to carry one of the NBA’s most storied franchises while he’s at it—but even the loftiest aspirations begin with exceedingly practical concerns. What makes LeBron James LeBron James is the fact that he sees the game like few ever will and from it makes plays like few ever could. Yet the way that manifests is in LeBron anchoring a team, day in and day out, for decades. Not by being a legend, but an indisputable reality.

Davis, in turn, has become one of his own. The Lakers are a different team under rookie head coach JJ Redick, with different organizational priorities. The ball finds Davis in his spots and on his time. If the first action fails, the teammates will wait for the AD and search for him again. It shouldn’t be so radical when a team looks first to its bigs, but for years Davis has been a secondary consideration for the Lakers — drifting in and out of focus, at times almost in conjunction with the action. Under the previous coaching administration, whole quarters could roll by without AD getting a single meaningful touch. No more.

“He’s going to be presented with offense no matter what,” Redick said an interview with Lakers.com back in July. “He’s going to be featured. He’s got to have the ball. We’ve talked about him being an offensive hub for us. To me, everybody says, ‘Oh, Anthony Davis is great on offense, but his real value is defensively.’ His real value is just being Anthony Davis and the fact that he’s an elite two-way player.”

That has long been true, if not always so evident 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. battle – a somewhat modest, less insistent form of stardom. Davis didn’t force much, choosing instead to roll and defend and respond. He drew most of his curves from other people’s games. He played his part. This season, Davis is putting up a career-high 31.2 points a night and is jostling with Giannis Antetokounmpo for the scoring title. The two have been circling each other for years, in a sort of call and response of what a modern big should be. Giannis is a model unicorn. His game revealed itself the day the Bucks put the ball in his hands and encouraged him to run free, and so much of his career since has been lived coast-to-coast in a kind of perpetual fast break.

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Davis has thrown himself into those kinds of extensions, but he’s found new heights this season by making his already streamlined game even more focused. Tighter. Slimmer. More conscious. Redick still wants Davis to take 3s every now and then, and he’s hardly the first coach interested in tapping into AD’s potential as a shooter. Back in New Orleans, Alvin Gentry went so far as to run Davis through curls like he was Klay Thompson. The Lakers’ 2020 run to the title — the most meaningful shooting range of Davis’ career — are both undeniable proof that Davis can shoot and a stark contrast to most of his recordings since. Davis shot just 35 percent from outside the paint last season, in what was one of his better spring shooting campaigns recently. The occasional 3 is nice, but for Davis, it’s often a passive shot — one he’s mostly traded this season for streaking past his defender to lunge toward the basket.

The push to make Davis a shooter came from his touch and natural fluidity. The should work. But why not channel those same attributes instead to get him on the move and let him charge into the paint? 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 most time-honored way a big can: by driving his way to the rim as often as possible. We can – and should – wonder what sets a unicorn apart, but sometimes it’s really all about the horsepower. Davis is not just big and strong, but fast. He wants to hit an opponent big, and once he does, they have little hope of stopping his all-out assault without overcommitting and sending him to the line.

As Davis stands up in the post, he fouls. When he runs the floor, he makes mistakes. When he gets a mismatch, he makes mistakes. After just nine games, AD has already attempted 102 free throws – second most in the entire league. But when you watch Davis work, there’s no mystery about where those calls come from. Sure, he plays for the Lakers, but more importantly: His singular focus is getting to the basket. Davis is as shifty and coordinated as any big in the league, a nightmare to defend in space. And those who are asked to check him often have no rim protection behind them, because the is the rim protection. Good mirroring for the wings who dare to rotate over from the weak side; AD is here to remind them – and maybe us – that sometimes life is just an exercise in lost causes:

Redick has held up his end of the bargain in terms of getting Davis the ball, and Davis has delivered by pushing himself in ways he never has before. You can see it in AD’s abandon as he hustles toward the rim, but even more so in the sheer tonnage of what he’s been able to accomplish as the centerpiece of the offense. If you were to do a full autopsy of AD’s quietest stretches as a Laker — like, say, the fourth quarter of a crushing playoff loss to the Nuggets back in April — you’d find yourself untangling a mess of cause and effect. Clearly, the team was not always organized in a way that suited Davis or himself. But even if the game plan was in order, too many Laker guards have seen themselves as the protagonist on every possession. And even when they did trying to get the ball to Davis, he too often found reasons to give it up. He wasn’t always fighting for position, attacking his mismatches or even crashing the offensive glass. The biggest changes this season have come in the way the Lakers set up Davis in the first place, but his willingness to push for more– insisting on his star status – has allowed the team to rely on him in a completely different way.

Davis played for teams in New Orleans that were seemingly built around him, but they were so flawed and outmatched that it almost didn’t matter. These Lakers are not. The guards can’t keep a man in front of them for their lives, and the bench can be empty some nights, but there is talent and an internal logic to the guard and a clear understanding that Davis is the best player in uniform. The most prolific assist combo in the league this season has been LeBron to AD. That connection is not new; James has always looked for his superstar running mate. Yet the balance of these relationships has shifted. Davis used to finish plays from James; now he makes them possible. Any pick-and-roll with Davis driver with the roll, even when the guy with the ball in his hands happens to be the most transcendent creator of his generation. The circle is now complete.

James has been about as good this season as a player a few weeks away from 40 could reasonably be, but there are blemishes in the every-night brilliance that for so long set him apart. LeBron can’t do everything anymore, and shouldn’t; The Lakers have the wherewithal to survive when he takes a back seat on offense or a literal spot on the bench. Tellingly, the same no longer holds true for Davis. There is no such thing as an acceptable substitute. Jaxson Hayes isn’t cutting it. Christian Koloko is just to come back on a basketball court. You could roll out Gabe Vincent stacked on top of D’Angelo Russell in a giant trench coat, but I’m guessing they wouldn’t be able to cover the ground like AD.

Davis has always been talented and often injured and sometimes flighty. Now he is simply essential. Every Anthony Davis team ever built has necessary Anthony Davis, but no Lakers team—and perhaps none of AD’s previous teams, period—has been this structurally dependent on his presence. James can elevate the players around him, but it’s Davis who gives them the wherewithal to compete. If the AD can’t handle the heavy production of the offense, it falls apart. If he can’t save the entire defense, it goes from bad to so much worse. So much falls on Davis and so much hangs in the balance every time, e.g. a wrong finger sends him to the ophthalmologist. The catch of superstars is how it makes you indispensable. All Davis has to do now is what LeBron has done for years: Carry the weight, day after day, for as long as he possibly can.