The Whiteboard: Anthony Davis has never been better

The Whiteboard is The Step Back’s daily basketball newsletter, covering the NBA, WNBA and more. Subscribe here to get it delivered to you via email each morning.

Until his Game 2, game-winning buzzer-beater, Anthony Davis had been having a fairly quiet postseason. Certainly not in the box score, where he’s averaged 28.7 points, 10.7 rebounds, 3.9 assists, 1.0 steals and 1.4 blocks per game, shooting 57.3 percent from the field and 40.0 percent from the 3-point line. But he hadn’t really featured in the narrative arc of either previous series.

The first-round was about the Trail Blazers’ bubble momentum withering under the heat of the Lakers‘ polish and power. The second-round was about the bottom falling out of the Rockets, again, the individual shortcomings of James Harden and Russell Westbrook and the collective shortcomings of the team’s roster and strategic design. To this point, the Lakers’ postseason run has mostly been defined by the things they’ve destroyed.

And that could have been the case for this series against the Nuggets as well. Denver completed two miraculous 3-1 comebacks to set up this matchup with the Lakers. Their blowout Game 7 win over the Clippers gave them the veneer of destiny. But, with Davis’ 3-pointer as the presumed high-point, this is the third monstrous wave of momentum to break itself on the seawall of the Lakers. And watching the same tragedy play out for the third time isn’t nearly as compelling as just celebrating the heroic journey of Davis, LeBron James and company.

No one has had an answer for Anthony Davis in these playoffs

As amazing as Davis’ productivity has been, the scenarios in which he’s accomplished it are almost more incredible. The Trail Blazers had the size to try bully ball with the Lakers and Davis spent the vast majority of his possessions in that series guarded by either Jusuf Nurkic or Hassan Whiteside. Against Houston, the Lakers mostly went small with Davis at center and let him leverage his five-inch height advantage against P.J. Tucker or James Harden.

And Davis has adapted. His assist percentage in these playoffs –19.2 percent — is a higher mark than he’s posted in any complete regular season. In his two previous playoff runs with the Pelicans, roughly 75 percent of his 2-pointers were assisted on. This season, just 54.5 percent have been assisted on. He’s averaging 1.00 points per possession on nearly five post-ups per game, a step up in efficiency from the regular season.

He’s also averaging 4.1 drives per game (catching the ball at least 20 feet from the basket and dribbling to within 10 feet of the basket). By shooting 57.1 percent on those drives and drawing a foul on nearly a quarter of them, he’s averaging 1.04 points per drive. During the regular season, the high-water mark for points-per-drive by players who averaged at least 4.0 drives per game was Karl-Anthony Towns at 0.825.

And that’s just offense. Collectively, the Nuggets, Rockets and Trail Blazers have managed just 102.3 points per 100 possessions when Davis was on the floor.

The Lakers pushed all of their chips (and draft picks) to the center of the table to get Davis and it was for moments exactly like this. It wasn’t just for the abstract idea of getting a second-star to put next to LeBron James, it was for a matchup-busting offensive force, unstoppable inside and outside, capable of feasting off the space and opportunities LeBron creates and of creating for himself. It was for a dominating and versatile defender who could be the backbone of a championship defense. The appeal wasn’t just the two-way star they’d seen to that point, it was a budding star who still hadn’t found his ceiling.

The Lakers need six more wins and Anthony Davis seems ready to deliver.