Brick by Brick: Anthony Davis

Perhaps the most overdue entry to our Brick by Brick series, Anthony Davis solidified his historical standing after winning the 2020 NBA Championship with the Lakers.

Davis occupied a long and storied history of transcendent players toiling on bad teams — namely Kevin Garnett and LeBron James. Like Garnett, being in the west made it hard to contextualize him. “How can one of the best players in the league rarely if ever even make the playoffs?” Wisely, people understood that the visciously competitive west, the nature of being non-ball handler, and never playing with elite distributors, is not a knock on the theoretical potential of a player like Garnett or Davis. Moreover, there is some consideration towards the reality that when a player is so overwhelmingly better than their teammates, putting up historic numbers is even more impressive, given how much attention and game planning effort is directed towards stopping them.

It’s tricky to know what sort of approach to take starting off here. This isn’t a career obit. Davis is only 29 years old. Yet, it also feels like there’s a Dwight Howard path here, where Davis fails to log any more truly consequential time as an elite player. FYI, I don’t think that is going to happen — for a few reasons — but the fact that it is worth mentioning, indicates the weirdness of the past few years of Davis’ career. All I can say is that it would be a damn shame if we don’t get a couple more good seasons of LeBron/Davis symbiosis, given how few seasons AD has actually played alongside good players.

Season by season

Let’s go through his bizarre “arc”.

Here’s a weird stat: Anthony Davis has only made All NBA First-Teams. AKA, he has zero appearances on the Second or Third Team. What does this mean? To me, it reflects some level of reality that “whenever this guy logs a full season, he is probably the best power forward in the league”

• 2013–14 — Anthony Davis made his first All-Star appearance in his age-20 season— as Kobe’s replacement, mercifully, after he was voted in having only played 6 games.
• 2014–15 — The following season, he made the early leap truly great players do, averaging 24 pts / 10 rebs / 3 blks / 2stls. His 2.9 blocks were league leading for the second year in a row, and he did it on 59% True Shooting, and league leading 30.8 PER. Making First Team in age-21 season, with those numbers, is a small group of players. Davis rightfully was considered the best under-25 prospect in the league.
• What happened in 2015–16? Davis has always averaged 60–65 games per year. Consistent health has always been an issue. He was shut down with 14 games to go, and the Pels finished 12th in the West at 30–52. Finishing the season with only 60 games under his belt, is teetering right around the cutoff many voters toy with for All-NBA voting. With that sort of record, he was cut.

As a tangent — two other factors don’t help Davis’ case when it comes to voting. He has explicitly said he doesn’t like playing centre. In 2015, centre was still a much more rigid definition, as seen by DeAndre Jordan and Andre Drummond’s appearances. As well, that era is one of the deepest as far as forwards go. LeBron, Davis, Durant, Kawhi, Paul George, Draymond, Butler, Blake, Giannis. If there’s an excuse to leave someone off, voters can find it. With the evolution of the league, Davis has thankfully moved to occupying voters’ attention for a centre slot. A smart adjustment for the league, as many forwards are now more wing-oriented.

• After settling into his early prime in 2016–17 and 2017–18, Davis comfortably made First Team.
• 2018–19 — This is a frustrating year. Although he still made All-Star, in January of 2019, Davis formally asked for a trade out of New Orleans. After a deal was not done at the deadline, Davis basically shut himself down early, missing the rest of the season. He only logged 56 games, and righfully failed to make All-NBA, despite being healthy and capable enough to do so. Even if he didn’t make First Team, it hurts missing out. You only get so many prime years, and for such a transcendent player to simply pass on playing basketball in his age-25 season is tough as a fan.
• 2019–2020 — You know what happened here. After being traded to the Lakers, Davis lived up to the hype when put in a system of good players suited to his strengths. Davis made First Team amidst the Covid delay, and logged a fantastic playoffs as the consensus 1B — not 2 — next to the greatest player of his generation.
• 2020–21 & 2021–2022 — Unfortunately, for himself, the Lakers, and the fans, AD really hasn’t contributed to his legacy in any way since the 2020 bubble playoffs. Although he still made All-Star in 2021, Davis missed the back half of the season and subsequently on All-NBA. Ditto for last year, where he only played 40 games, and didn’t look like his borderline MVP self either. He has played almost exactly 50% of games since his ring (2020–21 was the 72 game shortened season).

Zooming Out

So what sort of arc is that? How do you measure trajectory? Or a “peak.” Whenever he plays, he is the best PF in the league. The successor to Kevin Garnett as a two-way complimentary dynamo who fits amongst a litany of other great players, without needing the ball dominance that so many stars command.

It’s dramatic to talk about Davis being a disappointment. He has a ring, a Hall of Fame career, is comfortably in our top 40/level 3 (a big deal, I know), and will have accumulated generational wealth. Yet he is similar to a Shaq, Dwight, or David Robinson, where it still feels like an underachievement to some degree. Perhaps more like Robinson, much of it is out of Davis’ hands. Injuries — to some degree, and for seven years — teammates. As mentioned, there is still time to rewrite the book and jump up this list further.

Perhaps an underdiscussed factor about how Davis’ career can feel disappointing is how the league caught up to Davis in certain ways. With the influx of international talent, Davis is now contending alongside Jokic, Embiid, and Giannis, for the title of best big man. After a void of big men in the early 2010s, three unlikely dudes have rocketed not just to admirable All-Star level, but contention for “best player in the league” status.

The best evidence I have for this broader phenomena of development that everyone is now aware of is actually Davis’ former teammate, Jrue Holiday. Holiday made his sole All-Star appearance in 2013, at age 22. Now, does anyone think that the best version of Holiday is his 2013 season? No. The league, and conference, has improved around Holiday at a clip faster than he can keep up with, even if he has continually improved into an excellent two-way guard.

Although AD has continued to improve, the entire league has gotten much better around him. He can still be a top five talent, but the standard is higher. That is not the sole factor of this list — qualitative measurement is highly important (re: Davis’ 2017–18 season). It does unfortunately make it harder to contextualize modern players. I’ve alluded to it before in a previous article, but All-Star appearances in the past 8 or so years are far more impressive than they were 30 years ago, in my opinion. Beal putting up 30 PPG and not making the East All Star team is an easy example. It means Davis can’t rest on his laurels, return to play, and slide into an easy Third Team selection. If he was entering the back half of his prime in the late 90s, that may of been the case. Now, Giannis, Jokic, Embiid, Gobert, Towns, Bam + the ageless wing-forwards a generation ahead of AD, are all in the mix alongside him.

Ranking — #41

Davis logged some of the great under-25 seasons, as I pointed to earlier. His 2018 season can hold up against almost any PF season ever. He finished 3rd in MVP voting at aged 24. In the Ringer’s 21st Century Wine Cellar Team, his 2017–18 season was rightfully selected as a fantastic one.

Assuming he never wins MVP, he will always be able to point to this as one of the great seasons to not win, and represent a handful of great players (right with CP3 and D-Wade). He also finished 5th in MVP voting in 2014–15, and 6th in 2020–21. Impressive as that is, it feels like he should have more. It’s hard without consistent health. Regardless, three top fives is rare air. Playing alongside other players can also cannibalize votes, in a way that makes top-five finishes a reductive stat (i.e. KD/Steph Warriors).

Here’s the resume:

• NBA Champion (2020) as 1B
• 3x Top-5 MVP finish
• 4x All-NBA First Team
• 8x All-Star
• 2x All-Defensive First Team
• 2x All-Defensive Second Team
• 3x blocks leader

Let’s discuss Davis’ actual on court ability. His ceiling as defensive stopper is so ridiculously high. He doesn’t occupy the offball style in the same way Giannis does, but can probably rim protect better. His younger self could also probably guard waterbug point guards slightly better than Giannis — he is slightly more flexible in the hips.

Davis’ is a funny case when it comes to shooting. He is often pencilled in as a decent shooter, and has showed far more good stretches than Giannis. But much of his shooting has still been theoretical. He has struggled from outside the midrange gap, and has never shot above 34% from 3. Like Giannis, he is one of the premier rim runners ever. Unlike Giannis, he can’t handle point forward duties to the same degree (not that that is necessarily a huge knock).

As mentioned, Davis is in many ways Garnett reincarnated. His fit alongside LeBron is proof of that. His entrance on the Wine Cellar team is confirmation. Though the average fan naturally praises a floor-raiser, a ceiling raising, malleable offball player is better for winning championships, and a rarer commodity.

Outside of his 2020 Finals run, Davis only has a couple years when he’s made the playoffs. His run vs the 2017 Warriors caused little people to doubt him. The following year, was our best evidence seeing a fully unhinged Davis running on all cylinders on both ends of the floor, as the Pelicans swept the Blazers. Check out these highlights from the series. Davis’ was a ghoul.

It really is a shame that we didn’t get more of these playoff runs. It also shows Davis’ raw potential, and how ridiculous upper echelon ceiling players are. Lillard is a delight in his own, and the Blazers were also a very flawed team. But there’s no world where he has the capacity for the two-way dominance we saw from AD in this situation.

As is now my habit, let’s examine tiers, before breaking down actual ranking.

Level 2

No-doubt-about-it Hall of Famers who couldn’t crack Level 3 for one of five reasons: they never won anything as an elite guy; something was missing from their career totals; they never peaked as a top-five guy; at least two or three guys who played their position at the same time and were better; or their careers were shortened by injuries and/or rapidly declining skills.

Level 3

No-doubt-about-it Hall of Famers who ranked among the best for a few years with every requisite resume statistic to match; no MVP winner can drop below Level 3 unless there is a fantastic reason.

Level 4

Basically L3 guys, only there’s something inherently greater about them. Possible tip-offs: Do they have to be considered in any “best of all time” discussion? Did they have transcendant games or memorable moments? Were they just dominant at times? Will you always remember watching them play, even when you’re ninety years old and peeing on yourself? Are they in the mix for some all-time benchmarks? — Simmons

Davis would have been a tougher player to measure prior to his championship. His inconsistency with play as discussed above puts him in a category similar to Kawhi, except without the rings. Being in the league a long time, but without more than 6 quality seasons, would have put him somewhere in Level 2, and around the Dwight Howard range, who as we know, fell off earlier than anticipated. Although playing the results is not the only way to do this, we do know that if Davis had been given the opportunity to play for even decent teams, he would’ve added similar value to Dwight, who was fortunate enough to have a couple good cracks.

Given Davis’ combo of ring, ceiling, and number of good seasons, he is comfortably in Level 3. I wrote recently on the murkiness of Level 4. I think the best way to articulate the difference between 3 and 4, is the Level 4 guys are basically unimpeachable. They are not amongst the very best, but all have very little holes to poke in their career. There are still glaring flaws in most of the Level 3 guys, and in Davis’ case that is currently longevity.

Of course, he still has time to fix that. It is jarring to see the difference in bounce between now and 2018. However Davis still has plenty of athleticism and skill to provide on both ends of the floor, even if he needs to make adjustments to his game.