Lakers News: Former Lakers Great Hypes Up Anthony Davis's Dominant Streak
Current Los Angeles Lakers All-NBA center Anthony Davis emerged from a relative early funk to start flattening people across his last ten healthy contests, as he has effectively taken the reigns from All-Star colleague LeBron James, who remains an elite player on offense in his 20th season but is no longer a consistent threat defensively, as L.A.'s most important player.
With Davis leading the charge over the course of the club's last ten contests, the Lakers have gone 8-2 in that span (and are currently riding a three-game win streak). To be fair, three of those eight victories came against the blatantly tanking San Antonio Spurs, losers of 11 straight, while another came against another pretty clearly rebuilding franchise, the Detroit Pistons. Even still, a win is a win, and L.A. has more recently had some pretty convincing victories, including against solid playoff-caliber clubs like the Milwaukee Bucks, Portland Trail Blazers (without Damian Lillard) and the Washington Wizards (without Bradley Beal for all but three minutes).
Across his last five games (during which L.A. has gone 4-1, and could have perhaps finished undefeated, had it not been for a blown fourth-quarter lead against the Indiana Pacers), Davis has boasted averages 35.2 points on 66.7% shooting from the floor, 13.4 rebounds, 3.2 assists, and 3.2 blocks. Even when zooming out for the entire 2022-23 season, Davis's numbers are still impressive: 28.6 points on 59% shooting, 12.8 rebounds, 2.6 assists, 2.4 blocks, and 1.4 steals.
Evidently, another title-winning Lakers big man, retired power forward/center Pau Gasol, has taken note of AD's recent string of MVP-level output. The legendary seven-footer, who played for L.A. from 2008-2014 and was the second-best player on consecutive title-winning Laker teams in 2009 and 2010, took to Twitter to show some love to the latest in a long and illustrious line of Hall of Fame Lakers big men, the 29-year-old Brow:
Gasol will have his No. 16 Lakers jersey retired in a special ceremony on March 16th. Here's hoping that Davis continues to enjoy a prolific and relatively healthy season leading up to that moment.
