Anthony Davis is here for the Warriors and everything else

The last time Anthony Davis and the Warriors met in the playoffs, Davis was at his best. In 2015, Golden State began the march to their first title of this era with a four-game sweep of the Pelicans. They were a roaring river of motion and passing and 3-pointers and Davis was an enormous boulder in the middle, spinning off eddies and currents in every direction. It wasn’t enough to secure a win, but Davis averaged 31.5 points, 11.0 rebounds, 2.0 assists, 1.3 steals and 3.0 blocks per game, shooting 54 percent from the field and getting to the line nine times a night.

He was 21 years old.

Final result aside, that series seemed to announce that Davis had arrived as a player who could not just carry a team to the playoffs, but survive the greatness-eroding effects of matchups, and superior competition and increased scouting time once he got there. He was going to be the kind of player who would spend his time in the playoffs matched up with history and legends from the past, as much as the team in front of him.

In the two following seasons, the Pelicans did not even make the playoffs as Davis suffered through nagging injuries and watched the bodies of his teammates similarly break down around him. The failings of his supporting cast were endlessly acknowledged but Davis’ own reputation was subtly tarnished by his inability to transcend.

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Now, Davis gets a second shot at the Warriors and it the Pelicans who finished their first round with an emphatic sweep. He averaged a slightly more impressive 33.0 points, 11.8 rebounds, 1.3 assists, 1.8 steals and 2.8 blocks per game in the first round and somehow he wasn’t even the story for his team — it was Jrue Holiday’s suffocating defense on Damian Lillard, Playoff Rondo, and even the smooth baby-faced heroics of Nikola Mirotic.

This is the team that Davis deserves, one that is both capable of scaffolding his greatness and pushing him aside when the moment calls for someone else’s heroics.

As this series begins, the team around Davis is the most obvious difference between now and 2014-15 but it’s not necessarily the most important one. The Warriors may be playing without Stephen Curry at 100 percent or, potentially, without him at all for at least some of the series. These Warriors have also evolved over the past three years, adding more talent (as absurd as that premise is) with the addition of Kevin Durant, but also becoming smaller, more ingrained in their versatility and, at least on offense, slightly more tilted towards the individual brilliance of a single scorer.

The ceiling for the Pelicans has climbed since the last time they met, but it has for the Warriors as well. This team may not be fully healthy and they may not have been challenged enough to mash the pedal to the floor during the regular season, but that capacity still exists. Durant can still be Durant. Klay can still be Klay. Curry can still be Curry. Draymond can still Draymond. Collectively, they can still be the team that lost just once in last year’s playoffs.

And, planted firmly in the path of the oncoming deluge, is a different Anthony Davis too.

Davis is now a seasoned 24-year-old. Trust me, it feels as ridiculous to type that as it did for you to read it but there is a polish to his game that he didn’t have three years ago. He is more in control on defense, savvier on offense, more adept at picking his spots, conserving energy, setting himself up to win the easy battles so his reserve of athletic creativity can be saved for the ones where it’s the only way to win.

The Warriors don’t have an easy answer for Davis in this series. JaVale McGee has been fun and, at times, good, but Anthony-Davis-stopper is not really the context one would expect him to shine. Asking Durant to use the requisite defensive energy will have an offensive cost. This would appear to be the situation Draymond was made for, but the Pelicans scored at a rate WAY above their season-average in the 119 possessions he was Davis’ primary defender in their three regular season games.

That’s the beauty of Davis’ supporting cast, and why this series is so much deeper and more finely layered than the series three years ago. Davis doesn’t have to be brilliant in the 40-point, 15-rebound way for the Pelicans to be competitive. He can absorb the focus of Golden State’s defense, wear out Durant and Draymond, force Steve Kerr into uncomfortable lineup decisions and let Holiday and Mirotic attack.

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Obviously, they have to stop Golden State too, and the health and availability of Stephen Curry will have a lot to do with the enormity of that challenge. But, in terms of talent, rhythm, experience and momentum, the Pelicans are better equipped for this challenge than they’ve ever been. Whatever happens, this is the moment for Davis to finally build on what he started against these Warriors three years ago, to show that he’s playing for a legacy bigger than a single playoff series.