Anthony Davis Just Needs to Outplay Nikola Jokic to Prove All His Haters Wrong

Stephen Douglas | Apr 22, 2024

Apr 20, 2024; Denver, Colorado, USA; Los Angeles Lakers forward Anthony Davis (3) reacts to a foul / Andrew Wevers-USA TODAY Sports

The Los Angeles Lakers are in an 0-1 hole to the Denver Nuggets in their first round playoff series. This shouldn't be a surprise since the Nuggets are the defending champions, swept the Lakers last year, and were 10 games better than the Lakers this season, but the Lakers are the Lakers and thus they demand more attention.

Despite the fact that this is has looked like a typical two-seven first round series so far, we have to continue to talk about why the Lakers have a serious chance against Denver. Sometimes that results in an article that reaches so far the author suggests that Spencer Dinwiddie could be the key to a postseason run. Dinwiddie scored zero points on zero field goal attempts in 13 minutes in Game 1, but that's a very small sample size, right?

On the other hand, sometimes the demand for more Lakers content results in this column from ESPN's Dave McMenamin where you learn just how frustrated Anthony Davis has become with the Defensive Player of the Year voting.

"I'll never get it," Davis told ESPN when asked about the award. "They're not giving it to me. The league doesn't like me. I'm the best defensive player in the league. I can switch 1 through 5. I can guard the pick-and-roll the best in the league, from a big standpoint. I block shots. I rebound."

I don't know what else to do. I'm over it. I'm just going to do what I got to do to help the team win and try to play for a championship. Accolades and individual awards, I'm done with those."

Those pesky, faceless haters. Doubting a big star as usual. It's a shame that Davis feels the league doesn't like him because he really is quite good. But it's also good to hear he no longer cares about individual awards because Victor Wembanyama appears ready to grab that one and not let go until well after Davis retires.

Not that he doesn't have a point a point. He's been on the All-Defensive first team twice and second team twice. He's finished second in DPOY voting in 2020 and third in 2018. He's led the league in blocks three times. He's a versatile and dominant defender.

This year the top three vote getters for the award were Rudy Gobert, Bam Adebayo and Victor Wembanyama. Davis has more rebounds per game than all three. He has more blocks per game than Adebayo and Gobert. He has more steals per game than Gobert and Adebayo. Wemby and Davis both averaged 1.2 steals per game.

This is where Davis has a chance to prove all his perceived haters wrong. He just has to go out make life miserable for the Denver Nuggets and Nikola Jokic. In game one Jokic had 32 points on 16-of-23 shooting to go along with 12 rebounds, seven assists and one win. Davis put up 32, 14 and five while he blocked four shots. Not bad, but not quite good enough.

Just need to pump those numbers up a little while holding the two-time MVP to a substandard performance. if Davis can do that a few times this series and the Lakers can advance then it will still be too late to adjust any ballots, but at least those team accomplishments will suddenly be back on the table.