The Significance of Lakers’ Anthony Davis Trade Settling in During NBA Finals

Mark J. Terrill/Associated Press

Every monster performance from Anthony Davis needn’t be used to justify, and re-justify, and re-re-justify, all the Los Angeles Lakers gave up to get him last offseason.

For starters, he has too many herculean efforts to keep up with, his otherworldly stat lines not so much numbing but definitely a status quo. More than that, the Lakers’ path to Davis, however clumsy and cringeworthy, never needed actual defense. Even if they surrendered more assets than they should have, given they were his entire trade market, they still acquired a megastar to pair with their other megastar, LeBron James. 

And yet, over a year later, the gravity of Davis’ arrival is starting to resonate in a different, more meaningful way, at once cementing the Lakers as heavy NBA Finals favorites and strengthening the franchise’s longer-term outlook.

This is not an overreaction to Los Angeles’ 124-114 victory over the Miami Heat on Friday night, during which Davis tallied 32 points and 14 rebounds while shooting a ridiculous 15-of-20 from the floor. Nor is it meant to discredit the Heat, who trail the Lakers 2-0 in the series due to a combination of injuries (Bam Adebayo and Goran Dragic didn’t play in Game 2) and, more broadly, the fact they’re facing a superior opponent.

It isn’t even meant to imply Davis’ Friday night eruption is somehow much more than another business-as-usual detonation in a long line of many, many others this postseason. Consider it instead a reminder, another layer of Teflon neither the Lakers nor Davis really need, amid a discussion that’s only happening in partial.

Immediately, in the context of these Finals, Davis hailing from another galaxy is being celebrated, its significance on this series far from lost. The Heat don’t have a prayer of completing, maybe even half-staging, a comeback if he continues to dominate like this: thoroughly and overwhelmingly. Their missing players—Dragic was their leading playoff scorer entering Game 1—are part of that potential hopelessness, but inching closer to full strength won’t do much good if Davis is carving up anything they throw at him.

Relying more on man-to-man and switching in Game 1 didn’t help. Davis went kaboom then, too, arguably louder and harder. He finished with 34 points, nine rebounds and five assists on 11-of-21 shooting, and though he combined to go just 3-of-10 when being guarded in part by Jae Crowder and Andre Iguodala, the Lakers as a team averaged an absurd 1.24 points per possession in those situations.

Leaning more on zone defense in Game 2 didn’t help the Heat. Davis feasted at nearly every level, slipping through inexplicably large cracks in the middle, binging on jumpers and pressuring the heart of Miami’s setup when attacking off the dribble. There was no keeping him off the offensive glass; more than half of his 14 rebounds created second-chance opportunities.

Where the Heat go from here is almost an unfair question. Begging them to abandon the zone, if only for the sake of keeping the Lakers’ offensive rebounding in check, is a lot harder to do if Adebayo’s neck and shoulder injuries cost him another game.

Their half-court offense should only get worse without Dragic (torn left plantar). It was more than respectable relative to the circumstances in Game 2, on the backs of a comprehensive outing from Jimmy Butler (25 points, 13 assists) and a Kelly Olynyk outburst (24 points, 9-of-16 shooting).

Perhaps the Heat can bank on the Lakers regressing to their mean from the outside. They entered the Finals shooting a so-so 35.5 percent from distance, on 32.4 attempts per 100 possessions. They’re at 36.5 percent from beyond the arc over the past two games, on 44.7 attempts per 100 possessions.

Davis’ own shooting could be seen as an outlier. He’s hitting 58.8 percent of his jumpers for the series (10-of-17), after connecting on just 36.5 percent of them during the regular season. But he’s also at 49.4 percent on jumpers for the playoffs. What’s happening now isn’t that far behind his postseason normal.

Putting up more of a fight on the glass and around the basket in general should be a series-long issue. The Heat are not that big even with Adebayo. Their issues won’t be as pronounced with him—over 45 percent of the Lakers’ points during Game 2 were scored in the paint, compared to 32.8 percent in Game 1—but they’re not going away, not in this matchup, not with LeBron and AD both thundering their way downhill.

Mark J. Terrill/Associated Press

At the risk of counting out Miami too early, it feels like the in-the-moment importance of Davis’ play will soon be outshined by what it means to the bigger picture: that this Lakers team, questioned for its depth and long-haul viability in mass prior to the start of the season, might not be going anywhere for a while.

This isn’t an attempt to board the Los Angeles-as-underdogs bandwagon. That shouldn’t be a thing. The Lakers were billed as contender this season, by the vast majority, even if reluctantly in some cases. That they’re halfway to a title, against a banged-up Heat squad, is not revelatory.

Davis contending for the Finals MVP—if not making it his to lose—as LeBron goes supernova beside him is a different story. He’s been treated in so many ways as the consummate cornerstone sidekick: the superstar you want after you already have the superstar. His absence of playoff success with the New Orleans lent itself to an idea that he cannot be the absolute best player on contender.

There might be more than a kernel of truth to that sentiment. From-scratch shot creators have an easier time ferrying teams on their own. Not even peak Davis is that player. But so few stars can lug a team to contention without another alongside him. That list is populated by maybe five players if Davis isn’t one of them.

Looping him into the majority of the superstar minority is hardly insult. He’s also shown there’s more to his value than that. Maybe he can’t be a team’s LeBron, but he can be the best player on the floor for a team that has its LeBron, without that LeBron always playing like pinnacle LeBron. This doesn’t make him a floor-raiser so much as a ceiling-preserver. He ensures contention as part of what has become the NBA’s normalized title partnership.

Whether he has another, unexplored level to his stardom is debatable. He has done a better job making self-created shots during the playoffs, and the Lakers have handedly won the minutes he’s logged without LeBron, outscoring opponents by nine points per 100 possessions.

Still, chances are Davis is never that all-encompassing offensive hub. That role demands a heavy dose of primary playmaking duty. That’s not his bag. (His passing in the postseason has flown under the radar.)

That’s fine. Davis is the next best thing after that: someone who continues to show he can do everything else, at both ends of the floor. There will be nights in which that isn’t always clear; his defensive rotations in Game 2 were blah themselves. In the aggregate, though, he’s his own version of a lifeline.

This is absolutely huge for a Lakers franchise not just chasing a 2020 title, but that mortgaged so much of its long-term livelihood to bring in Davis. For now, he is still LeBron’s No. 2. But LeBron is 35. Davis, 27, is the future.

And right now, in no uncertain terms, he’s playing like it.

Unless otherwise noted, stats courtesy of NBA.com, Basketball Reference, Stathead or Cleaning the Glass.

Dan Favale covers the NBA for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter (@danfavale), and listen to his Hardwood Knocks podcast, co-hosted by B/R’s Adam Fromal.