The Herd with Colin Cowherd - Hoops Tonight - Top 25 Players in the NBA: Anthony Davis is the best DEFENSIVE player in the NBA

Episode Date: August 11, 2023

Jason Timpf continues to rank his top 25 players in the NBA by revealing No. 6, Los Angeles Lakers’ Anthony Davis. After starting the season 2-10, Anthony Davis carried the Lakers to the Western Conference Finals by anchoring the defense. While he isn’t the offensive player of other players in the top 10, his presence on defense is enough for him to be ranked 6th in the NBA. #Volume #herdSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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This is probably the ranking in my top 10 that's, going to have people disagree with the most, although Luca was one that a lot of people disagreed with. But I know that generally speaking around the league, people are pretty low on Anthony Davis. And a big part of that is he's not nearly the offensive player that his peers are on this list. As we look at the 12 guys from, you know, Devin Booker at the 12 spot up the list, every one of those guys is a better offensive player than Anthony Davis. and it's not particularly close, to be honest. And I think that that's the most easily digestible basketball trait,

you know, the ability to put the ball in the basket or to help other people put the ball in the basket. And so people focus on that a great deal. And it's important to acknowledge that AD is a good offensive player, but he's not at the level of those guys. That said, I thought he demonstrated after the trade deadline this year, pretty resoundingly, that he is the very best defensive player in the league when he is healthy.

And you could argue that just Anthony Davis's individual value to the Lakers as a defensive fulcrum is every bit as important to that unit in the way they win basketball games as on the offensive end, guys like Steph and Nicole Yokic are to their individual offenses. The Lakers were one of the worst defenses in the league this year when AD was off the floor. They had a 1-18 defensive rating to give you an idea that would follow in about the 27-28 range out of the 30 teams. And when AD was on the floor, they were one of the very best defenses in the league

for the entire season, regardless of roster makeup. They had a 110.7 defensive rating with AD on the floor, which would have ranked third in the NBA compared to the rest of the team. So basically, 80s on the floor, top tier elite defense, 80s off the floor, absolute garbage defense. That's the level of value that Anthony Davis brings to that into the floor. And that is the entire season, as we zoom in and we will in a little bit, on what happened after the deadline,

he was at even another level above that. We're going to do a deeper dive into AD's defense in general as well, just some of the schematic things that make him so dominant on that end of the floor. But the general theme for today goes back to what I was saying about Luca Donchitz when I had him at 10. I don't like theoretical basketball. We play the games for a reason. We get results.

It removes subjectivity from the equation. Anthony Davis's defensive value wins basketball games. End of story. So much so that even Steph Curry, a guy who's way above him on this list and a guy who I think is the greatest offensive weapon of the last decade of NBA basketball, even Steph couldn't solve the Anthony Davis defensive puzzle in that second round series for the Warriors. AD won that chess match. As a matter of fact, led by AD, the Lakers held Steph to a 55% true shooting.

percentage in that series, which was Steph's lowest mark in a playoff series since the 2019 series against the Houston Rockets. Now, is AD better than Steph? No. But the point is, is AD's superpower has an impact on basketball games that was able to overcome even what Steph's superpower was within the context of all the other matchups in that series. And that is why, even though he's not the same level of offensive player as the other guys around him on this list, I have him up at number six in this year's player rankings. We're going to do a big deep dive into what he accomplished this season. And I think after we really look back and zoom in on what he accomplished, you guys will probably start to see, at least for those of you guys who didn't follow

the Lakers very closely this year, you'll start to see in greater detail just how impactful he was on winning this season. So quick season recap, he played in 56 games this year, which was the most he's played in since the 2020 bubble season. Average 26 points and 13 rebounds. Now, 26 points on 63% true shooting. So again, not the same quality offensive player as his peers, no doubt, but still a very damn good offensive player. And especially when we zoom in and a little bit on some of the shot making stuff,

he still can't make a jump shot to save his life. So with where he's at offensively, it's not like you're leaving a ton of gap there between his peers, but he's just somewhat below them, right? Also averaged two blocks in a steel per game. He was actually third in the NBA in stocks. That's steals plus blocks. He was third in the NBA in stocks per game behind Jaron Jackson. And who do you guys think is number two? Quick trivia. If you guessed Nick Claxton from the Brooklyn Nets, you were correct. As a shot creator, not a great year. As a half-court shot creator, he was 0.92 points per ISO, which is below average. 1.06 points per post-up among the high volume guys that was middle of the pack. So there's

20 players in the NBA last year who ran at least 200 post-ups and AD finished 11th on that list. And pretty much behind all of his peers at the center position. The one guy who's one of his peers at his position that he beat out, that he beat out was BAM at a bio. Shot making was the biggest issue. Shot just 35% on jump shots, 39% when you weighted that for three. So 39% effective go-go percentage, just 36% on pull-up jump shots all from the mid-range. So every single time you saw Anthony Davis take some sort of dribble step back or turnaround jump shot or something like that out of the post, anytime he took a shot like that, it had about a two out of three chance of missing.

And so if it felt like that when you were watching the Lakers, you were right in the sense that that was what the percentage landed out at. As a matter of fact, his jumper was a big issue, particularly in spot-up situations. When he was unguarded, he shot just 31. 1% on jump shots. So it's starting to look more and more like the bubble was a big outlier for Anthony Davis. He had a, to give you an idea, in the bubble, he had a 59% effective field goal percentage on catch-and-shoot jump shots and a 45% effective field goal percentage on pull-up jumpers.

So just not the same type of shot maker, really at any point of his career outside of the bubble. there was definitely like that 35% or 39% effective field goal percentage overall on jump shots, that's low compared to his career. Like he's typically in the low 40s and had a lot of years there in New Orleans in particular where he was in the low 40s. So definitely a bit below what his career numbers were. But even as we zoom in on the entire kind of zoom in on individual stretches of his career, there never was a stretch where he shot as well as he did in the bubble.

So I think we can pretty safely assume that that was a number. outlier. He shot 51% on floaters this year. That's good, not great. It's good compared to guards who are taking floaters over the top of shot blockers and stuff. But for Anthony Davis, with the quality of looks, he gets with those little pop shots in the paint, that's actually pretty low, and way below where his peers at the position are. As a matter of fact, Nicole Yokic was almost 70% on floaters this year. It goes to show you the difference between those two guys and their touch. AD was 61% on hooks, which is very good. As a matter of fact, I'd say that's great.

I mean, Yokic hasn't beat by about 5% there, but again, Yokic has the best touch in the league. I'd like to see AD get the floaters up to about 60% as well. I just think that's such an important shot for him to be able to demonstrate that he could score over the top of the defense. He is incredible at the rim, though. 5.6 makes per game in the restricted area trailing just Yannis at 1, Zion at 2, and his teammate LeBron James at three.

So he's the fourth best rim-attacking player in the league. He was 76% in the restricted area on shot attempts, which is higher than any of those three guys that are above him. So it's one of those things where he has all of the tools to be that top-tier offensive player. Does a really good job scoring in all of the advantage-created situations, right? But when it's time for him to create for himself, that touch over the top, particularly with his floater and his jump shot,

is the problem. If he improves that, if he gets his pull-up jumper, you know, that mid-range pull-up up, like where he's consistently making in the low 40s instead of in the mid-30s, that would be help a ton and get that floater up to 60%. I think if he got to there, all of his individual creation numbers would go up considerably. Not to mention that would open up things a lot for him to start attacking the rim even more than he does. Anthony Davis is a deadly role man. and the Lakers used him a lot as a role man, especially with all of the guards that they have that could run, pick, and roll.

A.D. shot the ball on the roll 242 times this year, leading to 311 points. That 1.29 points per possession on roll man shots was third out of the 11 players in the league to log at least 200 role man possessions, which, you know, when you watch the film, it's actually especially impressive when you consider he's not a very good screener.

that's definitely a weakness of his compared to his peers. He doesn't set good screens that free up the guard better, which inherently free up him better when he's on his role. It's just he's so damn quick, and he's got such a good handle compared to other bigs, and his touch at the rim is so good that Anthony Davis makes up for that and is still a great role man, but I'd like to see him get a little bit better as a screener.

He is arguably the best vertical spacer in the league, just a huge target with great hands and dunks everything. and he's also a pretty good short roll passer. Not quite as good as Bam. Definitely not as good as Yokic, but he's a solid short roll passer. It's not like he's hurting his team when teams kind of gather around him

when he's catching on the roll. It was generally an up and down season. Started the year really rough. In the 2-10 stretch for the Lakers to start the year, he did not score 30 points a single time. He averaged just 23 and 11 during that stretch, which was just not good enough. But then he hit the Jets for a month

and was just absolutely unbelievable. If you take out the game that he got hurt against the nuggets when he hurt his foot, if you take that game out because he left early, and then there was a game where he left early in Cleveland, too, sick, where he played just a few minutes and then left because he wasn't feeling well. If you take those two games out, there was a 12-game span there over the course of that month where he scored 30 plus and nine of the 12 games. He averaged 35 and 15 in that 12-game strikes.

The Lakers went 8 and 4. in that span, and again, that was before the trade deadline when the reinforcements came. The peak of the run was a road game in Milwaukee, where he dropped 44 going blow-for-blow with Janice and Tenacumpo in a win, and then he followed that up two nights later in Washington, dropping 55 on the Wizards in a win. But then he suffers the foot stress injury against the Nuggets. Huge bummer, because, like, for years, Laker fans were just praying that AD would be able to get back to the level he was at in the bubble, and he kind of was.

was at that level during that 12-game stretch. Again, 35 and 15 is like MVP of the league level production that he was putting out there before the injury, but then it was like, man, here we go again. And he ended up missing 20 games. And as you guys remember, LeBron really carried the team over that stretch. And then AD comes back and then LeBron gets hurt, probably related to the workload he had to put in at that point in time. But at that point, it became Anthony Davis's job to basically do what LeBron did and carry

the team. and he did that and then some. Anthony Davis, after coming back from the foot stress fracture, a foot stretch reaction, I should say, missed just three games the entire rest of the season. And all of them were back to backs when he was forced to miss by the medical staff. He averaged 25 and 13 overall in that stretch. There was a 16 game stretch from February 26th to April 2nd,

where he averaged 29 and 13 on 59% shooting. So not quite the level he was at before the foot injury. offensively, but still really, really good. But most importantly, this was the stretch post-trade deadline where Anthony Davis went up a level on defense, and it completely reestablished the Lakers as one of the very best defensive teams in the league. Over the course of the final, 26 games of the season, which is the stretch that represents every game the Lakers played after their trade reinforcements actually were in

jerseys. the Lakers were second in the NBA and defensive rating over that span. They took that like pick and roll identity that they had where it's like LeBron James, DeAngel Russell, Austin Reeves, and Dennis Schroeder just running a ton of pick and roll with Anthony Davis as the fulcrum on the offensive end. And then they added this incredible defensive identity that they really haven't had since the 2021 season. And suddenly they became one of the better two-way teams in the league. They finished that stretch of the season going 18 and 8. and getting all the way back to being in the playoff picture

and having a legitimate path in front of them to make a playoff run. And AD, again, this is not 2020. You know, in 2020, LeBron was still running the show. I don't think people remember, like, especially LeBron fans in particular, because they just insist on saying he's the best in the world all the time. I don't think people realize how big of a drop off there's been since 2020. For people who forgot, in the 2020 playoffs, LeBron averaged 28 points, 11 rebounds, and 9 assists on 65% true shooting.

That's unbelievable best player in the world production. In the finals, LeBron averaged 30 points, 12 rebounds, and 9 assists on 67% true shooting. That was LeBron's team. He was still the offensive fulcrum. Obviously, Anthony Davis was the defensive fulcrum, but LeBron was the best player on that team. This is not the same LeBron. He's gone from being the best player in the world to just a really good number two. He's just another one of the superstars now.

He's not like on a tier by himself atop the league the way he used to be. AD is more consistently impactful than him. He's the literal structure that the team is built around both in their pick and roll attack offensively and as the rim protector on defense. This is Anthony Davis's team now. And it continued into the postseason just a little. until he ran into Nicola Yokic. In the Memphis series, he averaged 4.3 blocks per game, completely dominated the series defensively in the Lakers 1. In the Golden State series,

he completely shut down the Warriors' motion offense. Really, in the first game, they ran here and there throughout the series, but it never was effective, really just by patrolling the paint. Every adjustment Steve Kerr made over the rest of the series was designed to try to pull Anthony Davis away from the paint, and none of it worked. As we said before, this was Steph's most inefficient series since the 2019 series against Houston Rockets. They held both Clay Thompson and Jordan Poole below one point per shot attempts. So they both had more field goal attempts than points in the series.

Next thing you know, the two and ten Lakers. The all is dead and the season is over, Lakers were in the conference finals. Now, before we talk about what happened in the conference finals, because I want to stay on the positive with AD for just a little bit longer, let's talk about why Anthony Davis is the best defensive player in the world. because if you remember, I talked about how BAM at a bio is probably the most versatile defender. There are a couple of specific defensive things that BAM is better at that I think make him a little more versatile and makes him such a great fit with the Miami Heat.

But in terms of the ultimate top tier ceiling defensively, I don't think anybody can reach Anthony Davis's level. Even Janus, who I thought was the best defensive player in the world during that stretch when Anthony Davis was hurt all of the time. And it really hinges on three core skills that make Anthony Davis. Anthony Davis, the best drop coverage big in the world. Number one, he's excellent at getting up to the level of the screen, but also getting back to the rim after his guard recovers. Now, remember, in the NBA right now, all of these guards are insane pull-up jump shooters, right?

So you can no longer run a traditional drop coverage where you back all the way back to the rim and let the guy just kind of drive into you. Because he's not going to drive into you. He's going to rise up and take a jump shot. So a lot of people refer to this as the yo-yo. the job of the big to get up to the level of the screen, to dissuade the pull-up jump shot, recover back to the paint. Up to the level of the screen, recover back to the paint. And the reason why they call it a yo-yo is now in the NBA, especially for fast-paced teams,

they might run three pick-and-rolls on the same possession. Shut down a pick-and-roll. They're just resetting and running another one. They might swing it to the perimeter and have the big run up and set a quick screen, and now he's defending a different player in pick-and-roll. And so that's why they refer to as a yo-yo. You have to get up and back and up and back, and it requires a great deal of mobility. And with AD's combination of mobility and just outrageous length, he's one of the best in the world at getting up and back in that yo-yo to dissuade the pull-up shot and to get back to the rim.

Second, when he's up at the level of the screen, he's got super active hands. Now, the game that I think best describes this skill is game three of the Warriors series this year. So if you guys remember, they run a lot of pick and roll in game two. The Lakers bring a pretty poor defensive effort. they get killed in game three. If you watch that game, look at how many times Anthony Davis got deflections up at the screen. Because when AD's up, Steph's trying to get rid of it to the roll man or if they're tagging

the roller to the weak side, right? And Anthony Davis is looking and tracking Steph as he's getting ready to make that pass and he's getting deflections, which is leading to turnovers and getting the Lakers out the other way. The Lakers had a dominant game in game three of that series. and most of the damage was done by Anthony Davis and his active hands up at the level of the screen. Again, if you're up there and you don't have active hands, that's actually the worst place you can be

because if the pass gets through, it's a four on three now, and you're at the top of the key, and you're not in a position where you can help defensively. But if you have active hands and you dissuade the pass, hell, if you get him to pick up his dribble, then you get to recover. But if you dissuade the pass or if you deflect it in some way, shape, or form, that's when it's a defensive playmaking opportunity to go the opposite end and get out in transition,

which was such an important thing for the Lakers in particular because of some of their half-court offense struggles. But those are the first two things. Getting to the level of the screen, super active hands at the level. And then lastly, when he's at the rim, there's nobody in the league that is better at blocking and changing shots. So when you put those three traits together, it makes Anthony Davis the best drop coverage big in the league. one of the few bigs that can consistently run drop coverage in the NBA playoffs without getting killed. Again, drop coverage used to be suicide against Steph Curry. Ask the Boston Celtics.

That's what cost them the NBA finals. But with the Lakers, it worked, and that's the advantage of having Anthony Davis on your roster. Again, when we're talking about why he's without, with the offensive limitations that he has, to be up at number six in the league, you have to be truly transcendent defensively. and Anthony Davis made a coverage that used to be a death sentence against Steph Curry into something that literally caused him to have his most inefficient series since the 2019 playoffs. And so that's the advantage of Anthony Davis. Nothing is quite as difficult in the NBA as trying to run pick and roll at Steph Curry.

As a matter of fact, or excuse me, at Anthony Davis. And you know what's funny is he shut down John Morant too. John Moran averaged 1.04 points per possession in pick and roll in the regular season. A.D. and the Lakers held him to 0.87 points per possession in pick and roll. So Anthony Davis, his ultimate superpower, is shutting down pick and roll in the NBA, and it is the foundation to what was a dominant Laker defense that made it all the way to the conference finals. But, and again, before we move on, like I said before, not quite as good on, switches as someone like Bam, for instance, but he's still pretty good in those situations.

Also, not quite as good in boxout situations as some of the bigger, stronger players at his position, but he's not a perfect player, but I think overall, when you factor all of the elements of defense in, I think that he is the best defender in the league. I was super disappointed in Anthony Davis in the Denver series, though. Not because he lost to Yokic. Yokic is the best player in in the world, and sometimes what happens in basketball is you run into a guy who's better than you and you just get to lose. And I'm not trying to overthink that specific concept. But I didn't think AD fought as hard as he was capable of fighting. It was kind of, you know, especially visibly sometimes, it looked as though Yokic kind of sapped AD of his confidence and his

energy and he looked lifeless at times. The Nuggets absolutely shredded the Lakers defense. I don't think people realized just how, how ineffectual AD was. AD in particular was ineffectual defensively in that series. The Lakers had a 116 defensive rating in that series against the Nuggets. That was by far the worst out of the three other opponents that Denver faced. With AD on the floor in the Nuggets series, the Nuggets scored 125 points per 100 possessions. He couldn't stop Yokic in the post. He couldn't stop Yokic in face-up situations or ISOs, including that pivotal basket in Game 4 that ended up being the game winner. He couldn't slow down the two-man game. Yokic just absolutely torched him.

beat him in transition, just running up and down the floor like he always does every time the two of them play. It was honestly a little embarrassing for Anthony Davis. And it wasn't just Denver's offense and an unguardability factor because we saw other teams in the playoffs do a better job. And that's where I look at the lack of fight and the lethargy in that like it just is like it's one of those things where like you're on the ground, what are you going to do? You're going to lay there and let the dude keep kicking you or are you going to get up and try to fight? You know what I mean? and I just wished that AD was a little bit more willing to fight in that specific situation. The one thing I want to do to cut him some slack, though, is AD had been playing at a playoff level of intensity since February. Because of the predicament the front office put them in, hey, here's your reinforcements.

There's some good basketball players go, oh, by the way, you're the 13 seed. And there's 30 games left. So let's see what you got. That was the situation he was put in. And so as a result, he was on the Jets, like nonstop from February all the way to March, all the way to April, all the way to May. And usually it's not like that. You know, Yokic and the Nuggets, they got to chill the last third of the season and then hit the Jets for two months.

AD had to hit the Jets for four months. And I do think that that played a role in the lack of energy that AD had to fight against Yokic harder than he did. the one thing that was just kind of a bummer though is like it just wasn't a good look to see game four and see lebron like literally leaving his heart and soul out on the floor trying to win the game and ad is just kind of coasting through until the last like he kind of turned it on in the fourth quarter a little bit but that was it so like it i was definitely a little disappointed that he didn't that he didn't put up more of a fight against yokech even accounting for the fatigue uh so in summary ade is a super flawed offensive

player, not a good jump shooter, but he is still a good volume score. It was very efficient. Biggest area of improvement there is he needs to work on making shots over the top of the defense. He is one of the best role men in the league. Excellent at finishing at the rim, especially above the rim as a vertical spacer, but he's got great touch as well. He's also a good passer in short-roll situations. Tends to be very up and down offensively. That was kind of the theme of this postseason was like the one-night AD would have 30 and one-night AD would have 14. The one thing I didn't, I thought that was fair criticism for the record, because inconsistency offensively certainly hurts a basketball team.

But there was important context there. Every conversation surrounding AD's inconsistency needed to be framed around the idea that he was consistently great defensively. And so, yeah, can you be frustrated that he's not more consistent offensively? Sure, is it an area that he needs to work on improving? Yeah, mainly conditioning. He needs to condition himself to the point where he can devote those resources to the defensive end of the floor while not getting coached.

hooked in transition while also having the legs to get up and make shots on the offensive end of the floor. But when we're having those discussions, let's make sure we remember and frame it around the idea that he was the very best defensive player in the world. That was completely anchoring that Laker defense in the main reason why they were winning games. And that fact, AD being the best defensive player in the world, to me, is what puts him up as high as he is on this list. In order to really join conversations for best in the world, I think he needs to round out his offensive skill set, become a better shotmaker over the top,

improve his conditioning so that he doesn't run into problems with inconsistency and in transition. And then last but not least, take the Yokic thing as an opportunity to motivate yourself. Like that's the way that I would look at that. Like Yokic kicked your ass, but the beautiful thing about basketball, my favorite thing about basketball is you live to fight another day.

You know, one day it stops. like LeBron one day won't be able to go anymore. But that's what's amazing about basketball. You have the ability to completely change the perception of yourself because you go back and play the next day. LeBron James, the most upsetting and disappointing playoff of failure. Probably, you know, in terms of guys that are in the top 10, it's one of the worst ever, his 2011 finals performance against the Dallas Mavericks.

Went out the next year and game six against Boston has that big night. gets the trophy, all is forgiven at that point. And then all of a sudden, you know, you look back now in 2011 almost feels weird to talk about because it's like not even the same player. And that's the way that I look at it. You got your ass kicked by Nicola Yochich, but you have a leg up on him on the defensive end of the floor, make some improvements on the defensive end of the floor, excuse me, you've got a good roster, you've got the ability to make a move at the deadline to improve. There's a good chance that you're going to have another. opportunity in earlier late May in the second or third round of the Western Conference

playoffs to get another crack at Yokic in the Nuggets. You're going to get another chance. And so take this summer as an opportunity to shore those things up and give yourself a better chance to win that fight. But right now, best defensive player in the world and still a very, very good offensive player. I have AD as the sixth best basketball player in the world. All right, guys, that is all I have for today.

We're going to take the rest of the weekend off and we'll be back on Monday with number five. Another podcast from some SNL late night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week my guest, SNL's

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