Is Anthony Davis destined to get the Kevin Love treatment?

Anthony Davis is next most likely candidate for ascension to LeBron James / Kevin Durant status. At just age 21, he’s already a 20-10 guy and will undoubtably only continue to get better. Unfortunately for him, he plays on a mediocre team in the Western Conference. Given that New Orleans is likely to be absent from the postseason for the foreseeable future, it’ll be interesting to see if Davis ends up having to deal with a lot of the same criticisms Kevin Love had to in Minnesota.

We were reminded last season by a few high-profile superstars that basketball is a team sport. Carmelo Anthony had one of the best seasons of his career, yet couldn’t will the dysfunctional Knicks into the playoffs in a weak Eastern Conference. The Timberwolves were one of the best teams ever to not make the playoffs, but finished 10th in a brutal West. Kevin Love had a sensational season, finishing 3rd in Player Efficiency Rating behind James and Durant.

And yet, when Love’s name came up in trade talks this offseason, there was way too much conversation about how he wasn’t worth giving up Klay Thompson for in a trade (lol) because he’d never led his team to the playoffs. Simplifying a player’s value down to something like team record doesn’t paint an adequate picture. To really evaluate a star, or any player, there are considerations that have to be taken into account such as who a player’s teammates are, and how they affect said player. How did management do putting the team together? Is the coach good? What about on/off court numbers?

Davis has the potential to become one of those ‘it doesn’t matter’ guys, like LeBron or Durant, where you put him on a team with an average coach and supporting cast (think Cleveland with LeBron), put them in a normal conference and they make the playoffs. Love and Anthony aren’t at that level.

New Orleans won just 34 games a season ago, with a -2.7 point differential. They were in the top half of the league offensively, but were atrocious defensively, allowing 107.3 points per 100 possessions. The addition of Omer Asik should help, but even with him they don’t have a lot of potential to improve next season.

Davis and Jrue Holiday, who’s 24 but feels like he’s been in the league for 10 years, have room to improve and should. Asik will help with the defense and Ryan Anderson is one of the best stretch-fours in the league. But at what point do we just accept that Tyreke Evans, who’s entering the second year of a four-year $44 million deal, isn’t good. Eric Gordon is injury prone and average when he does play. By the way, did you know that Eric Gordon’s nickname is “The Hobbit?” Or at least that’s what Basketball Reference says. When did that happen?

In acquiring Asik, whose contract expires after the season, the Pelicans sent their first round pick next year to Houston. Before that, they gave up their last two first round picks to Philadelphia to acquire Holiday. In their attempt to win now and put a solid supporting cast around Davis, the Pelicans have severely limited their ceiling moving forward.

If they were in the East, it’d be a whole different argument. Good health, plus jumps from Davis and Holiday would surely be enough to get them into the playoffs, but in the West they’ll still be on the outside looking in next season. Pelicans management doesn’t have a great track record putting this team together, and thus little confidence can be had that they’ll find a way to improve the team enough next offseason, when they’re likely to be over the salary cap and will be without a first round pick.

Much of the criticism against stars like Love and Anthony stems from the fact that neither is a great defensive player. Davis won’t ever have that issue. He’s already a great two-way player. To answer the question posed in the title of this piece; no. Debate surrounding whether Davis is a franchise player or a superstar will likely never come to fruition. He’s going to be amazing and everybody more or less accepts that.

What’ll be interesting is to see how far he can take the Pelicans. Though they don’t have championship level talent, it’s not awful talent either. He’s not playing with the 2013 76ers. Some of the teams atop the West will eventually go through rough stretches, but that doesn’t mean the conference as a whole will be significantly worse off for it. For the better part of a decade now, the West has been stronger than the East and extremely deep. Barring major roster moves, can the Pelicans get to 47-49 wins next season or the year after? Probably not.

But there’s not the same hopelessness there was with Love’s teams, which were legitimately bad. Even last year’s T’Wolves were awesome when Love was on the floor, but they were abysmal when he rested on the bench. Maybe the Pelicans do figure it out. Eric Gordon stays healthy, Tyreke gets moved or demoted to a bench role where he can handle the ball a bit more, Holiday evolves into a top five point guard, and Davis becomes the best player in the league. Maybe Durant moves to the Eastern Conference in 2016, the Spurs fall way off, and the Pelicans become a top-four seed.

That’s a lot of what-ifs. It’s more likely that New Orleans stays mediocre-to-bad in the years leading up to free agency 2016, where they’ll have the cap capabilities to re-build the team. That’s when things really get interesting. In this era where stars are, correctly, leaving their teams to chase greener pastures elsewhere, the Pelicans will seriously be at risk of losing Davis if they screw things up the next time around. And unlike Cleveland with LeBron, New Orleans doesn’t have the good fortune of being Davis’ home city. If he walks, then likely he’s gone for good.