The Los Angeles Lakers never needed Anthony Davis as a unicorn. Maybe seemed as they did, given the mythological stakes involved – the call to take the torch from perhaps the greatest player ever. And to carry one of the NBA’s most storied franchises while he’s at it, but even the loftiest ambitions begin with extremely practical concerns. The thing that makes LeBron James Le Bron James is the fact that he sees the game as few ever will, and based on that makes plays that few ever could. But the way that plays out is that LeBron anchors a team day in and day out for decades. Not because it is a legend, but an indisputable reality.

Davis, in turn, has become one of his own. The Lakers are a different team under rookie head coach JJ Redick, with different organizational priorities. The ball finds Davis in his place and in his time. If the first action fails, teammates wait for AD and search for him again. It shouldn’t be that radical for a team to look to the bigs first, but Davis has been a secondary consideration for the Lakers for years; it floated in and out of focus, sometimes almost incidental to the action. Under the previous coaching administration, entire quarters could pass without AD getting a single meaningful touch. Not anymore.

“He’s going to be put on offense no matter what,” Redick said in an interview with Lakers.com in July. “He will come into the picture. He’s going to have the ball. We talked about him being an attacking hub for us. To me, everyone says, ‘Oh, Anthony Davis is great on offense, but his real value is on defense.’ His real value lies in the fact that he is Anthony Davis, and the fact that he is an elite two-way player.”

That’s been true for a long time, if not always so evident in AD’s approach or the way recent Lakers teams ran their offense. Since arriving in Los Angeles in 2019, Davis has never finished higher than 12th in points per game — a somewhat modest, less intrusive brand of stardom. Davis didn’t force much, instead choosing to roll and defend and respond. He drew most of his baskets based on the playmaking of others. He played his part. This season, Davis is scoring a career-high 31.2 points per night and competing with Giannis Antetokounmpo for the inside track to the scoring title. Those two have been circling each other for years, in a sort of call and response of what a modern great should be. Giannis is a model unicorn. His game revealed itself the day the Bucks put the ball in his hands and encouraged him to run free, and for much of his career since then he has lived from coast to coast in a kind of perpetual fast break.

Photo by Jason Miller/Getty Images

Davis has dabbled in those types of extensions, but he has reached new heights this season by further improving his already streamlined game. more focused. Tighter. Slimmer. More intentional. Redick still wants Davis to take 3s every now and then, and he’s hardly the first coach interested in tapping into AD’s potential as a shooter. Back in New Orleans, Alvin Gentry went so far as to curl Davis as if he were Klay Thompson. The Lakers’ 2020 run to the title – the most meaningful shooting stretch of Davis’ career – is both undeniable proof that Davis can shooting and sharp contrast for most of his shots since. Davis shot just 35 percent from outside the paint last season, in what was one of his own better jump shoot campaigns of late. The occasional three is nice, but for Davis it’s often a passive shot, one he’s mostly traded in this season as he darts past his defender and hurls himself toward the basket.

The drive to turn Davis into a shooter came from his touch and natural fluidity. It should work. But why not channel those same qualities by getting him moving and getting him into the paint? Instead of pushing the boundaries of what a center can do, Davis and the Lakers are finding better and more varied entry points that will allow him to hit the big time in the most time-honored way: by getting to the rim as often as possible. . We can (and should) marvel at what sets a unicorn apart, but sometimes it’s all about the horsepower. Davis is not only big and strong, but… quickly. He will beat a big opponent to the spot, and once he does, they don’t have much hope of stopping his all-out offense in the paint without overpromising him and sending him to the line.

When Davis faces the post, he makes mistakes. When he runs the floor, he makes mistakes. When he gets a mismatch, he makes mistakes. After just nine games, AD has already attempted 102 free throws – the second most in the entire league. But when you watch Davis operate, it’s no mystery where those calls come from. Sure, he plays for the Lakers, but more importantly, his sole focus is getting to the basket. Davis is as shifty and coordinated as any big player in the league, a complete nightmare to defend in space. And those asked to check it often don’t have rim protection behind them, because she are the rim protection. Godspeed for the wings who dare to turn from the weak side; AD is here to remind them – and perhaps us too – that sometimes life is just an exercise in lost causes:

Redick has kept his promise to get Davis the ball, and Davis has delivered on that by pushing himself in a way he never has before. You can see that in AD’s surrender as he charges to the rim, but even more so in the sheer tonnage of what he’s been able to accomplish as the focal point of the offense. If you were to do a full autopsy of AD’s quietest moments as a Laker — like, say, the fourth quarter of a crushing playoff loss to the Nuggets in April — you’d find yourself untangling a mess of cause and effect. It’s clear that the team wasn’t always organized in a way that suited Davis or himself. But even if the game plan were in order, too many Laker guards have considered themselves the main character of every possession. And even when they did Trying to get the ball to Davis, he found reasons to give it up too often. He didn’t always fight for position, attack his mismatches, or even crash the offensive glass. The biggest changes this season have come in how the Lakers established Davis in the first place, but also in his willingness to push moreClinging to his stardom has allowed the team to rely on him in a completely different way.

Davis played for teams in New Orleans that were ostensibly built around him, but they were so flawed and overmatched that it hardly mattered. These Lakers are not. The guards can’t keep a man in front of them to save their lives and the bench may be empty some nights, but there is talent and an internal logic to the roster and a clear understanding that Davis is the best player in uniform. The most productive assist combination in the league this season was from LeBron against AD. That connection is not new; James has always looked for his superstar running mate. Yet the balance of those connections has shifted. Davis completed plays by James; now he makes them possible. Every pick-and-roll with Davis leads with the role, even if the man with the ball in his hands is the most transcendent creator of his generation. The circle is now complete.

James has been about as good this season as a player a few weeks away from 40 could reasonably be, but there are flaws in the everyday brilliance that has distinguished him for so long. LeBron can’t do it all anymore, and nor should he; the Lakers have the tools to survive if he takes a backseat to the offense or literally sits on the bench. It’s telling that the same is no longer true for Davis. There is no such thing as an acceptable alternative. Jaxson Hayes doesn’t get it. Christian Koloko just got back on a basketball court. You could roll out Gabe Vincent on top of D’Angelo Russell in a giant trench coat, but I suspect they wouldn’t be able to cover ground like AD.

Davis has always been talented, often injured and sometimes volatile. Now it’s simply essential. Every Anthony Davis team ever built has necessary Anthony Davis, but no Lakers team — and perhaps none of AD’s previous teams, period — has been this structurally dependent on his presence. James can take the players around him to the next level, but it’s Davis who gives them the tools to compete. If AD can’t take on the heavy production of the offense, it will fall apart. If he can’t save the entire defense, things will go from bad to much worse. So much falls on Davis, and so much is at stake every time, say, an errant finger sends him to the ophthalmologist. The advantage of superstardom is that it makes you indispensable. All Davis has to do now is what LeBron has been doing for years: carry the weight, day after day, for as long as he can.