Kevin Durant: Anthony Davis is 'probably going to lead the league in scoring this year'
Anthony Davis, you may have noticed, put up a game for the ages in New Orleans’ season-opener on Wednesday. Playing in semi-anonymity amid the league’s 10-game schedule on that night, Davis contributed 50 points, 16 rebounds, seven steals, five assists and four blocks.
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It was an astonishing performance:
Davis’ work did not go unnoticed by the league’s elite, however. In the hours before his Golden State Warriors were set to take on Davis’ Pelicans on Friday night, Kevin Durant looked to the NOLA center/forward as the league’s next top scorer. From Chris Haynes at ESPN:
“[Anthony Davis is] probably going to lead the league in scoring this year easily … 50 for him is a good game, and now [he’s like] move it to the next one,” Durant said. “It’s kind of a customary night for him, so we’ve got to be prepared tonight.”
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“It’s hard to defend him,” Durant said. “You can’t. His first step is probably the quickest I’ve seen in a while at his position. He’s long, he can shoot it, he can dribble it, he can shoot the 3 — so he’s doing just about everything out there on the court.”
Durant, who led the NBA in scoring during 2013-14, looked rather good once the box scores from Friday night’s game were printed out:
That’s 45 points in 40 minutes of action for Davis, on 17-31 shooting. He added 17 rebounds, three assists, two steals and two blocks in, as you may have guessed, yet another New Orleans Pelicans loss. Davis’ team, which saw guard Tim Frazier coming in second in scoring for the second consecutive game, is now 0-2.
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Frazier, unfortunately, has become a bit of a punching bag for basic cable types that like to punch down in absence of any punching ability to begin with. Eschewing analysis (as someone who probably didn’t watch a single New Orleans Pelicans game in 2015-16), ESPN chatroulette Stephen A. Smith decided to single Frazier out:
Lol so true @stephenasmith pic.twitter.com/IDTOoupjY9
— BATTLES NBA™ (@BattlesNBA) October 27, 2016
It’s true that New Orleans general manager Dell Demps has done a poor job at putting this team together. Why Smith decided to lead into Frazier (who is averaging 18 points and 10.5 assists after a sterling late-season showing with the Pelicans last season) before going into Demps (who made a fine move in signing Frazier, the D-League’s 2015 MVP) is apparently only known to those who like to watch TV shows about sports during the mornings of what should be a workday.
To Smith and Frazier’s credit, the two appear to have come to better terms in the hours since Thursday morning:
Thank You https://t.co/aXDIDCkpq0
— Tim Frazier (@Timfraz23) October 29, 2016
Entering Saturday night’s game against the San Antonio Spurs – and their sometimes step-slow frontcourt of Pau Gasol and LaMarcus Aldridge – Davis is averaging a solid 47.5 points, 16.5 rebounds, four assists, 4.5 steals and three blocks a game. He’s turned it over just four times in 81 minutes of play. This is a sound start.
No big man has led the NBA in scoring since the fin de siècle, when Shaquille O’Neal edged Allen Iverson for the points per game title with 29.7 points per game in 1999-00, O’Neal’s lone MVP season. Outside of Shaq taking two other scoring titles and David Robinson’s padded-turn as scoring champ, the top of that leader board has belonged to scoring swingmen for decades leading back to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s first few years in the early 1970s. Bob McAdoo broke that spell in Buffalo for two seasons in 1974 and 1975, but his was mostly a face-up game.
Not unlike Davis’, as Kevin Durant pointed out on Friday afternoon. Even with New Orleans (at this point, signature) health and backcourt woes, he has no issue finding his way to the ball in ways that would be tougher for a traditional low post center. And with Durant splitting scoring duties on a Golden State team with Stephen Curry (who led the NBA in scoring last season at 30.1 points per contest), the field seems wide open.
And Anthony Davis, working on a team that needed 47.5 points a contest just to keep things interesting in losses to the Warriors and even the Nuggets, will have ample opportunity to hoist away.
So far, it’s been a splash. With those injuries, and that roster, the Pelicans were probably going to start the season 0-2 anyway, so we appreciate Davis making things all the more interesting by putting up historic numbers along the way. We’ve no reason to believe that this won’t happen again Saturday night in San Antonio and for the duration of what should be another tough season for New Orleans this year.
We’d offer a caveat along the lines of “perhaps not to the tune of 47.5 points per game,” but at this point just about anything seems within the realm of the possible for Anthony Davis, and his seemingly unending stream of talent.
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Kelly Dwyer is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at KDonhoops@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!