Lakers - All the secrets you don't know about Anthony Davis

"The scariest thing is that it's just starting to scratch the surface." So LeBron James on Instagram congratulated Anthony Davis after the two won the NBA title in Orlando, wiping out what was left of the Miami Heat in Game-6. The Los Angeles Lakers proved to be the best team of this long and weird season, in large part because they had the best two players on the pitch in every single game. During the playoffs LeBron and Davis combined for over 55 points, 20 rebounds and 12 assists per game in 21 games, recording the two best Net Ratings among players on the field for more than 28 minutes on average. Wrong to someone saying that, giving the right credit to Frank Vogel and his coaching staff for the work done, to the management and the rest of the team for having been able to raise their level when the stakes are significantly increased, this seventeenth yellow and purple title it begins and ends with the performances of LeBron James and Anthony Davis. And if it was difficult to doubt the dominance that LeBron has exercised over the entire league for almost twenty years, more concerns could be raised about the real ability of AD to support the Chosen One for an entire playoff ride. Not so much of a technical nature - the fit between the two is among the best that modern basketball can conceive - but more linked to the mental stability and experience of the former New Orleans. Before setting foot at Disney World Davis had only played three career playoff series, winning one. And despite a transcendental talent, for a long time he struggled to establish himself as a star of the highest level both due to the limits of team results and personality.Instead, in the months of the bubble Davis not only scratched the surface, but also erased any question marks that were written on it, consolidating himself as one of the strongest and most terrifying players seen on the pitch and joining an even more exclusive club: that of superstars in able to level up in the playoffs compared to the regular season. After touching them for the first ten years in the NBA, Davis seemed perfectly at ease in games in which simple talent is not enough but efficiency, versatility and cunning count. Qualities that define the so-called 16-game players and that Davis had never shown at high levels, at least until now. Of course, playing alongside the most successful player ever in the post-season helps a lot, but AD has not limited himself to shoulder to LeBron; on the contrary, he often and willingly dragged the Lakers through the adversities of the various series, without the opponents being able to understand how to stop him. The cover image will remain the one impressed by his scream after scoring the triple on the siren to beat the Denver Nuggets in game-2 of the Conference Finals or the blocks that squeezed the life out of the Miami Heat in the decisive game-6, but Davis' impact goes beyond the spectacular plays of these playoffs and is to be found in the many details that have embellished the yellow-violet title season. And while LeBron rightfully won his fourth Finals MVP title unanimously, we can say that Anthony Davis helped shape this version of the Lakers as much as the GOAT. Since the first outings of this season, the identity of the Lakers has been defined especially in the defensive half - where they recorded the third best rating in the regular season with 106.1 points out of a hundred possessions - and has gradually gained more consistency up to cancel opponents' attacks in the playoffs. An anti-aircraft defense, clean and precise rotations and masterfully executed match plans have allowed the Los Angeles to adapt to each opponent faced at each turn, gradually taking the measures as the series goes by and ending up defusing the strengths of the attacks. The Lakers first saw it with two explosive guards, capable of being dangerous both with and without the ball like Damian Lillard and CJ McCollum, continuing with the five out and James Harden's isolations foreseen by the Moreyball in Houston, and then arriving in Conference final against the Denver Nuggets and the most dangerous pick & roll pair on the bubble. Finally with the Miami Heat and their orchestra of shooters and smugglers, who had done so much harm to the best defenses on the east coast. All limited and managed by the cobweb woven by Vogel and his coaching staff, very good at reading the limits and strengths of the team they faced and overturning them by enhancing the staff at their disposal. LeBron suddenly returned to that of the first years in Miami, Howard a lite version of that of Orlando and Danny Green, KCP and Caruso left everything they had on the Disney World parquet by chasing opposing shooters for the blocks. In the end, however, the yellow-violet defensive castle held up against Anthony Davis’s alien ubiquity in covering the inevitable holes left by his teammates.Finished second for the season award for best defender in the NBA - went to Giannis Antetokounmpo - Davis used these playoffs to put the tags back in place, demonstrating what it means to be an octopus in your own half and what physical tools have become essential in the NBA today. The importance of long defenses is often diminished, especially when it comes to the playoffs and their value decreases in relation to the increase in overall talent on the pitch and the ability of the best forwards to exploit every little advantage. Rudy Gobert has heard this every year, when forced off the pitch by the zigzagging of the Splash Brothers, that he was only fit to play during the regular season. The NBA is constantly changing and with it the role of the long - in a transformation that has led the most pessimists to ring the bells in mourning for the species - but it always remains the cornerstone on which to build any defensive system. And Davis reminded us of the absolute need to have a player with his specific characteristics on the pitch if you are planning to go all the way in one of the most complicated competitions in world sport. Davis began his playoffs by having another long role in JaVale McGee alongside and defending on Portland's worst offensive player, Wenyen Gabriel, to be able to move from free safety to defending and finished them in man marking on the main game creator of Miami, Jimmy Butler, nine meters from the iron. A universal versatility that was not always present during his professional career, indeed one of the main questions entering this season remained the availability of AD to play consistent minutes from the center, which is why the Lakers had protected themselves with the signings of McGee and Howard. But if in the regular season Davis did not have a great desire to fight against opponents heavier than him for twenty minutes of mostly irrelevant games - also given his perversion in always falling to the ground - in the playoffs he was not afraid of spending himself. in heavier tasks, also because in this way it can force the other teams to drop one weight category. In these playoffs, in contrast to the regular season, he ended up playing 914 center-center possessions - for context in RS Davis had played 1,721 center-center possessions in 71 games - and only 621 of 4 in cohabitation with another long. And the results were not long in showing: in the minutes with only Davis in the painted Los Angeles he shredded his rivals with +15.7 points out of a hundred possessions, almost double compared to the two longs configuration (+8.3). In a league that is increasingly favoring mobility and length over height and weight, Davis is truly a unique prototype that has finally been enabled to unleash the potential he had been fantasizing about since the season in Kentucky. His telescopic arms, the fluidity of the hips and the rapidity of the feet allow him to defend practically in any game situation and against any type of opponent, in the painting and on the perimeter, on humans and in help.There is a simple reason why length, or extension, has replaced height as the most important parameter in the evaluation of a player and that is its functional application. If once the basket placed in an elevated position with respect to the pitch required athletes to be able to compete above it, now the improvement of technical skills and physical performance has dramatically enlarged the portion of the field on which you play and therefore to cover for defenses. Today the best defenses are those that manage to eat the horizontal space of the attacks without compromising their vertical dimension. And to do this, in addition to long arms, you also need fast feet and motor coordination - because if power is nothing without control, length is nothing without mobility. You certainly don't need a PhD in physics to understand that a player's wingspan acquires a whole other impact when he is free to move sensibly around the pitch, or it would be enough to watch five minutes of Mo Bamba. But no high-level defense can afford not to be built according to these principles and at the same time it is extremely difficult to be able to build a roster consistent with the qualities of one's superstars. We've seen him in the regular season with the Milwaukee Bucks and during the playoffs with the Miami Heat, but no one has hit us in the face like the Los Angeles Lakers. The yellow and purple not only have a tall team, with two long over two meters and ten always on the field, and an athletic prodigy who for seventeen years has destroyed the expectations that the world has placed in him, but above all they have a long team, where even the outsiders like Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and Danny Green create a wall when they open their arms. Even Alex Caruso, despite his ministerial appearance and related memes, is an athlete with above average sizes for the role. But no one has and knows how to use this combination of mobility and extension of their extremities in the NBA like Anthony Davis - besides perhaps Giannis Antetokounmpo - and the series played by the Lakers in Orlando have given us a clear demonstration.In the first round it was crucial to frustrate Lillard in his classic super high pick & roll, picking him up at the block level and obscuring his view with his arms. And if Dame - when he understood that he couldn't let go of the ball without having it intercepted - attacked the basket, AD used the bearing that the guaranteed air space of his arms to avoid being burned and contesting the point guard of the Blazers at the iron. instead he entered into Westbrook's nightmares, on which he had been hijacked given the percentages of the number 0 in the shot from outside. After the defeat in Game-1 against Houston, Vogel in fact gradually eliminated McGee and Howard from the rotations, thus lowering himself to the level of the Rockets but with more talented players, especially defensive. The Lakers tried to get the ball out of Harden's hands in every way with a complex system of spins and doubles, to force the others to create with a few seconds on the clock, also playing on Barba's laziness when not in possession of the ball. And Davis on Russell has inhibited the penetrations of the other game creator, enticing him to pull from outside or to be stubborn in the usual choices with the blinders that often and willingly result in a turnover and in two points of the opposing team on the other side. Also when AD was marking on a non-shooter like Westbrook he could freely help paint, leaving him an easier open shot or short closeout. Davis is extraordinary when there is to entice the attacker into his own trap, making him believe that there is a space and a time for the game, and then sucking him like a black hole with a unibrow.Anthony Davis represents the alpha and omega of contemporary NBA defenses. The two key points for a high-level defensive system, especially in the playoffs, are represented by the selection of perimeter shots and the percentages granted in the painted. It is no coincidence then that Davis in Orlando finished in the lead for contested shots from both two (154) and three (99), as well as first for blocks with 30 and fourth in steals (first among the longs with a wide margin) . And he cannot do one thing or the other, usually he can do them all together. He can shift to a fielder and hold it in front until he is forced into an impossible shot or close hard on a shooter without allowing a comfortable line of penetration. Humans who can perform particularly aggressive closeouts like him without leaving the frame and recovering on the ball thanks to the length of their arms can be counted on the fingers of one hand - and none of these have the balance and fluidity of Davis. The speed with which he opens his hips and repositions his body perpendicular to that of the opponent when attacked on the front foot allows him to help and recover in every game situation and is an indispensable quality for a proactive defense like that of the Lakers. The Finals represented for Anthony Davis a synthesis of everything he had already shown up to that point. He ridiculed Adebayo as if he were a poorer model in the same line of ultramodern longs, he limited Butler when it looked like Jimmy had embarked on his personal crusade in the bubble exposing his hesitations in shooting from outside. And he postponed Tyler Herro to next year, ruffling him every time the latter tried to get close to iron.And while Davis was the best defender by posting the bubble in Orlando, his double effectiveness on both sides of the field made him an unsolvable puzzle. Finally joined by a game creator - and not one by chance - of the highest level, he was able to show off an offensive game built tile after tile and that was not present just out of Kentucky. It remains the most sensational vertical threat in the NBA to this day, a marvel of coordination, timing and hands that come above all others. The speed with which he can climb over the iron both with and without the ball enhances the photographers' flashes and represents one of the most profitable ways in which the Lakers have exploited their physical size to their advantage. Davis at Disney World has closed 54 times over the iron, 15 of which alley-oops mainly primed by a specialist like Rajon Rondo. But his domination in the painted did not pass only from these conclusions with a high rate of spectacularity. Davis has found the iron way even without having to be primed a few steps from the basket, indeed now he is at ease not only in dynamic situations but also when he must take advantage of the advantages in isolation. With each passing year he has been able to add a dribble to his ball-in-hand initiatives to become a complete scorer, dangerous on three levels.He threw a ridiculous 79.8% in the restricted area out of 114 shots and of these only two thirds came after an assistance from a teammate, a sign that he also learned to create from the dribble. Also because few manage to stay in front of Davis when he starts with that lightning first step from the infinite compass and to contest his soft release especially with his right hand, writhing in the air as if he had no spine. A frontal game opened by his average jumper, who entered Orlando much more often than he did in his career, and which made him an even more lethal weapon. He scored 49.6% of his 115 shots from the midrange - in the last playoffs Kawhi Leonard, who seemed to have resurrected the average shot by bringing it back to Jordanian efficiency, had closed with 49.2% on 118 shots - which sent Denver to the asylum, unable to find a way to stop it.Add to this that Davis, a 33% regular-season three-point shooter, has decided to raise his above-average league average to 38.3% by putting some pretty heavy baskets in the LA run, it doesn't get complicated to explain why the Lakers they raised the Larry O'Brien Trophy. Davis finished the 21 games it took to win his first NBA title with 27.7 points, 9.7 rebounds, 3.5 assists, 1.4 blocks and 1.2 steals on average and 61% real percentage. A versatility that helped Vogel's team to overcome without too many problems the minutes in which LeBron sat on the extra-large sanitized bench. Historically in James' teams, those short interludes became horror movies: in the four years in Miami in the playoffs the cumulative plus / minus of the quintets without LeBron on the pitch was -22, in the second edition of Cleveland -96. This year the quintets that included only Anthony Davis have a positive differential of +4.5 points on 100 possessions, those with only LeBron +0.4. Numbers on non-sensitive samples but which represent how special the union between CEO and LeBron was and how the two are currently both in a separate category when it comes to their respective roles. Just as LeBron has revolutionized an entire generation of wing creators at the same time steroid and crazy, imposing new rules and new scenarios on the game, so Anthony Davis can establish himself as the most perfected all-rounder, the oversized second violin that fits all quintets.In the AD bubble he played the role of Mr. Wolf for the Lakers: he gradually solved every problem that Vogel's gang could encounter on their journey. And the Lakers continually took advantage of his services, moving him around the pitch where he could most terrorize opponents' executions. He marked Nikola Jokic and Bam Adebayo without needing to double, limiting their playmaking against the rotating teams; he switched on opposing game makers by taking them out of the game - by turning off Butler in Game-4 and Game-6 and effectively handing the title to the Lakers; he found the way to the basket with great efficiency, discovering the best way to hurt each time and showing a rainbow of moves in attack; scored the heaviest and most iconic baskets of the bubble to address series that would otherwise have become quite complicated. Davis has been wherever the Lakers needed him to be, a luxury that no team in the NBA can afford with such freedom and that ultimately made a difference. In an age in which we wonder what the future of the seven feet in contemporary basketball will be, Anthony Davis responded by outlining the path to follow.