DeMarcus Cousins’ unfortunate injury robbed the Los Angeles Lakers and the team’s fans of the opportunity to see him and Anthony Davis play together again.
While they played together for not even a full season in New Orleans, they were fun, they usually won and Anthony Davis was happy while it lasted. With only one open roster spot, LeBron Wire suspected that the Lakers may need it to add another center. But some new reporting on the subject thinks our suspicions are justified.
Even after the injury, Lakers brass don’t want Davis to play the center position much this season, according to NBA TV’s Jared Greenberg.
As we’ve covered here even before Davis signed with the Lakers, he doesn’t like playing center. But as statistics indicate, his teams usually perform better when he plays center and it’s also the position he has played most over the last few years.
According to positional estimates from Basketball-Reference, Davis played a whopping 96% of his minutes at center for the Pelicans last season. In fact, he’s played center in over 55% of his minutes over his career and the last time he played the majority of his minutes at power forward was in the 2014-15 season.
So, Davis is used to playing center even if it’s not his favorite thing to do.
The Lakers will need him to play at the five some, but it seems evident they don’t want him approaching last season’s workload at that position. The choices the Lakers face today are much harder than the ones they faced just yesterday, though. And despite their insistence on what the vision should be, pragmatism about Davis’ role and LeBron’s role would be wise for all parties.
