Despite being dominant the last one or two seasons, Anthony Davis has turned his game up to an even higher level to start this season. He’s leading the NBA with 31.8 points, to go along with 12.0 rebounds, 2.8 assists, 1.8 steals and 2.0 blocked shots a game while shooting 57.3% from the field so far this year.
The Los Angeles Lakers have talked about making him their No. 1 offensive option for years, but under new head coach JJ Redick, they may finally be walking the walk and not just talking the talk.
Redick said that they aren’t necessarily looking to force-feed Davis the basketball and that Davis is simply finding himself with lots of prime scoring opportunities in the flow of the offense (at 1:41).
JJ Redick discusses the #Lakers‘ explosive first half and the defensive struggles in the second half.
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“It’s funny,” Redick said. “Tonight, we ran a few things for him but it wasn’t like we featured him. It’s a testament to how we envisioned our offense. The ball is going to find our best players. We can certainly put guys in certain positions within our alignments and within our system to exploit their skills. But the ball is going to find AD if we play the way we want to play and then we always look for ways to feature him with a set call.”
One thing that has happened to start the new season as opposed to the previous five Davis played with L.A. is that he’s getting the ball off of movement more often than in the past. In the past, he would often get the ball in iso situations, which made him work hard for his points, but there has seemingly been less of that this year.
His outstanding production has allowed L.A. to rank fifth in offensive rating, seventh in field-goal percentage and eighth in points per game coming into Monday’s game against the Detroit Pistons.