Lakers' Anthony Davis on starting at center: 'I trust coach's decision'
New Lakers coach Darvin Ham is attempting to change things on the Lakers, who went 33-49 last year.
He's talked about running more, he has Damian Jones shooting threes, and he's "strongly considering" starting Anthony Davis at center this season.
How does Davis feel about it?
He says he's willing to trust the coach, but it's not a positive sign that he's referring to himself in the third person while doing so.
Davis says he wants to be a good teammate and play wherever the coach asks, but he made sure to emphasize that "AD" likes playing power forward instead.
The Lakers have generally accommodated Davis in this desire, bringing in big men JaVale McGee, Dwight Howard, Montrezl Harrell, Marc Gasol, and DeAndre Jordan to man the pivot alongside Davis. The New Orleans Pelicans also tried to let Davis play the four. Over the years they added Boogie Cousins, Robin Lopez, and Omer Asik, as well as two different Okafors.
Putting Davis at power forward theoretically saves his body wear and tear, but the downside is that it hurts the team's spacing. In 2022, power forwards hit 34.6 percent of their three-pointers. Davis hit 18.6 percent of his. For his career, he's just over 30% from behind the arc, and as a Laker, he's made 28.6 percent of his triples.
Besides the Brow, the options for the Lakers at center are Thomas Bryant, who played just 37 games the last two seasons after rupturing his ACL in 2020, and Jones, a 27-year-old journeyman who has averaged 5.6 points per game for his career. They also have 6-foot-9, 205-pound Wenyen Gabriel. That's it for the Lakers' big man depth, outside of LeBron James.
Last year, with Davis out, the Lakers turned to James to play the pivot, and he played 50 percent of his minutes at the five (based on Basketball Reference's play-by-play data). In 2021, 73 percent of James' minutes were at point guard, so that is a big shift (and likely the only time an NBA player has played the majority of their minutes at point guard, and center in consecutive seasons). Offensively, James was awesome at center. Defensively, not so much - although the entire team was bad on that end.
But LeBron isn't going to play center with Davis at the four, and so AD at power forward pushes James to small forward or point guard, positions where the Lakers actually do have depth. While James isn't a bad three-point shooter, he's essentially an average one, shooting 35.9% from deep last year while the NBA average was 35.4 percent. If Russell Westbrook (29.8 percent last year) is playing point guard, the court starts to get very small very quickly.
As much as "AD" wants to play power forward, the Lakers simply have to play Davis at center this year if they have any hope of contending. But Laker fans should find it discouraging that he's already so openly resistant to the idea.
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