NBA Season Preview 2022-23: 5 players looking to shed injury-prone label

1. Anthony Davis, Los Angeles Lakers

AD played 62 out of 72 possible regular-season games in the 2019-20 Covid-shortened season. But since then? He’s missed more than half of the Lakers’ games, playing just 36 games in 2020-21 and 40 last season. Even before the long absences of the last two years, it seemed like Davis was always banged up and heading to the locker room. Because he was. His list of injury designations is longer than the line down at the DMV: Achilles, adductor, ankle, back, calf, elbow, eye, finger, foot, glute, groin, head, heel, knee, quad, ribs, shoulder, thigh, thumb, toe and wrist.

The Lakers are still just two years removed from hoisting the Larry O’Brien trophy in October 2020. AD was a monumental part of that championship run. Even with LeBron averaging an insane 30 points per game, the Lakers are a completely different team without The Brow. AD hasn’t quite been the same player since the Bubble (when he’s actually been on the court), but there are positive signs that he’s capable of playing like the AD of old. Over the first two months of last season, he scored the third-most points in the paint in the entire NBA, and he still averaged two blocks per game.