The Whiteboard: Anthony Davis beast mode, scoring title and more

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The NBA’s Sunday slate was loaded with blowouts — of the eight games on yesterday’s schedule, three ended with blowouts of 25 points or more. Of those, the most significant may have been the Minnesota Timberwolves thumping the Orlando Magic. One of the NBA’s bottom-dwellers beating up on another might not seem that interesting but it was an immensely positive moment for a franchise that could sorely use it.

The Timberwolves’ 32-point win over the Magic was the 14th-biggest victory in franchise history and the team’s biggest win since 2016 when they beat the Memphis Grizzlies by 36. And, of the 128 points Minnesota scored against Orlando, 70 came from Anthony Edwards, Karl-Anthony Towns and D’Angelo Russell. Minnesota is hoping to build around that core but they’ve managed to play just 242 minutes together this season because of injury.

Anthony Davis is finally in beast mode for the Lakers

Over his past two games, Anthony Davis has attempted 32 free throws — 15 against Portland last Friday and 17 against Phoenix on Sunday. Those were his two highest free-throw totals of the season and just the fourth and fifth times he’d hit double-digit attempts. It’s part of a significant trend — Davis is averaging just 6.6 free throw attempts per 36 minutes this season, his lowest mark since his rookie season and a steep decline from last season’s career-high 8.9.

Unsurprisingly, just 23.4 percent of Davis’ field goal attempts have come within three feet of the basket this season and the share of his shots which have been mid-range jumpers is among the highest of his career. You can attribute this change in his shot selection to a number of factors — the physical challenges of playing through and around injuries, needing to accommodate an offense this is suddenly missing it’s either primary creation cog in LeBron James.

And then there is the outlier data point of Davis’ outside shooting during last year’s playoffs. For his regular-season career, Davis has made 37.7 percent of his long 2-point jumpers (16+ feet) and 31.4 percent of his 3-point humpers. During last year’s playoffs, he made 55.2 percent and 38.3 percent respectively, an unbelievable run of hot shooting that was essential to the Lakers’ championship run.

At the risk of overvaluing the psychological impacts of one of the hottest shooting streaks of his career, during the highest-leverage NBA situation he’d ever played in, it’s worth looking at how Davis began this season.

In the 23 games Davis played before his calf injury to begin this season, a stretch in which he played about 69 percent of his minutes with LeBron, he attempted just 6.2 free throws per 36 minutes and just 29 percent of his field-goal attempts came within three feet of the basket. A whopping 44 percent were either 3-point attempts or mid-range jumpers. Even under more ideal conditions with regards to health and personnel, Davis still seemed to begin this year with an outlier bent towards taking long jumpers — perhaps something he felt more comfortable with because of his playoff run?

The Lakers will need LeBron healthy to have any serious hope of defending their title but they may need a different version of Anthony Davis as well, the interior beast they saw during the regular season last year, the one they’ve finally seen again over the past two games.

Stephen Curry and Bradley Beal are taking the scoring race down to the wire

Stephen Curry and Bradley Beal have waged a back-and-forth battle for the scoring title and there definitely seemed to be some scoreboard watching going on Saturday. Coming into the games, Curry held a slight lead — 31.6 points per game, to Beal’s 31.1. Beal’s Wizards played early and he put up 50 in an overtime win over the Pacers, closing the gap by pushing his average to 31.4. A few hours later, Curry responded by putting up 49 against the Thunder and moving his average up by three-tenths of a point to maintain the same space between himself and Beal. This one looks like it’s going right down to the wire.

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