Anthony Davis is a different kind of future

We like to predict the future. To maintain a front of intelligence, of self-assuredness, but more importantly, to really believe in it, to nourish a property of self-preservation: the desire to make order from chaos, and find our place in it; to alleviate an anxiety.

But without the nuance that can be acquired only by inhabiting the present moment, we tend to project the future like ideologues, with absolute visions: This, and definitely not that — that being near its interminable end — is the future. We generalize, so we think in extremities, and without the application of our philosophies, we’re blind to so much. Even our own prophecies contradict each other. For years, supporters of new age basketball, ushered in by the statistical revolution, have considered two futures certain: Anthony Davis would take over the NBA, and a 3-point shot would become a necessary ingredient to superstardom — at the least, to efficient superstardom.

How is it, then, that Anthony Davis is second in the league in scoring, averaging 29.6 points per game, a cool 57.8 true shooting percentage, while nailing just over one triple every two games. Since the turn of the century, no player has disregarded the arc to that level and scored more than 28 points per game. The last player to do so was none other than Shaquille O’Neal. In a season that just saw the Warriors and Rockets face hoist more 3-pointers in 48 minutes than at any point in NBA history, how does Davis maintain that efficiency, that volume, that power to astound? He is proving, above all, that change isn’t linear, and we’re never as smart as we think we are.

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First, a word on how we got here: Efficiency. It is the watchword of the NBA, and the edict, stripped to its core, is to consistently find shots that provide a high rate of return, inarguably a winning strategy. The mistake, at its crux, is old school basketball has been associated with being inefficient and new styles are associated, automatically, with efficiency.

High-octane 3-point shooting machines, like the Warriors, Rockets, Cavaliers and Clippers, among others, have swept the league of late, while prodding, methodical ball-thumping squads laying their hopes in star scorers, like, say, Carmelo Anthony, have faltered. This isn’t random. In a vacuum, the new school trumps the old, but it has resulted in a creeping inability to recognize the plausible effectiveness of both styles. Just as old hands deride new ideas, DeMar DeRozan, who, by taking a beating inside the lane and firing off contested mid-range jumpers, is scoring 28 points per game to help vault Toronto into the position of being the second-best team in the East, draws as much ire as the Warriors — with whom the Raptors, in fact, have been trading the honor of honing the most efficient offense in the league, and in turn, of all time. They do this despite breaking two cardinal rules of offense in the 21st century, grinding the game down to a halt, and assisting on a lower percentage of their baskets than any team but the lowly Phoenix Suns. As a reward, Toronto gives up the third-lowest rate of turnovers in the league.

Two weeks ago, Dean Demakis declared Andrew Wiggins, with 21 years and unfavourable advanced stats under his belt, a bust. Nevermind his age, or the fact that Wiggins has made good on his biggest offensive weakness, and now possesses a 38 percent clip from beyond the arc, the piece misses out on the vitality of letting a youngster hone versatility, whatever mishaps and clanked J’s accompany him along the way. (While we’re here, read a good rebuttal, of the Wiggins take, and statistical absolutism from Jacob Rosen at Waiting For Next Year.)

Toeing the line, literally, with a jumper that extends just shy of 22 feet, is Davis. He is an MVP candidate, the best young player in the league, and according to some people, the qualifier of youth need not apply.

In general, when a big man squares up twenty feet from the basket, the numbers dictate that the opposition can take a sigh of relief. But a young Davis honed his skills on the perimeter until hitting a growth spurt in his junior year. He’s equipped with the size of a big man and the skillset of a wing slasher. Off the catch, he is perpetually ready to explode, with an array of driving moves, from running bankers, jumpers, floaters and hooks. He operates mid-air, his vertical and wingspan allowing forward acceleration while he cocks back for the shot. With 250 pounds of strength, he can barrel through the opposition, and like a 6-foot-11 Dwyane Wade, with a mastery of the geometry of the backboard, Davis can finish at any angle he so chooses.

These are the shots, by the way, that modern NBA defenses goad players into, because an increased proximity to the rim is often analogous with an increase in proximity to multiple defenders, sans the ease and banking options of a lay-up. But Davis shoots like no one is guarding. The apex of his shot is nearly unblockable, so he unleashes teardrops and runners with the confidence of a man who knows it, even when he has to fake, shake and split a double-team before the release.

All that amounts to terror for the opposition, so the threat opens up the rest of his game. A simple jab-step can leave him wide open from mid-range, another inefficient coldspot, but Davis is shooting with accuracy that channels LaMarcus Aldridge, one of the biggest pick-and-pop threats of the era. The shot diversifies his repertoire as a screener, forcing the defense to play honest against the most destructive roll man in the NBA. Against more agile defenders, Davis’s tight handle finds utility, combined with a wingspan that allows one crossover to span over three feet, which is how, despite constant double and triple-teams, just under half the basket’s Davis has made this season have been within eight feet of the basket, at a 58 percent shooting clip.

With an uncommon basketball upbringing and off-the-charts size and athleticism, Davis might be an outlier, or he could be the driving force behind the league’s next expansion. He is certainly the embodiment of a particular moment. A fusion of styles, built for an age where, despite their symbolic opposition, the Rust Belt has its own budding Silicon Valley. Assumptions, on both sides, are bound to be disrupted: By mastering what have traditionally been the worst shots in basketball, Davis, with model efficiency, is in position to challenge for the scoring title. And while he is harnessing the favorite spots of yesteryear to milk his opponents, he’s not pummeling opponents in the post ala Shaq, or mimicking DeRozan’s stylistic ode to Kobe Bryant. In fact, if there is an apt comparison for Davis, it might be Kevin Garnett, a fusion of old and new that is in fact, as much of a marker of the game’s evolution as the explosion of the 3-point shot.

Consider a dull thing about yesterday: You could see it coming. Protest, sure, insist that nobody saw the Cavs beating the Warriors in the Finals, but acknowledge Cleveland got there by breaking playoff 3-point shooting records. The revolution was in full tilt, and it still is, but it is only today that we are witnessing any blowback. It is near impossible to fathom, in a world defined by technological entropy, that the future could look anything like the past. But an engine only marches forward when its wheels turn in circles. The world, in general, plunges forward, but some fragments of history repeat themselves.

Anthony Davis is certainly unique. But so is every superstar. It is time, past time, to allow that he might be instructive.