Anthony Davis has been a real problem for opponents for years now. Back in his third season, 2014-15, he finished fifth in MVP voting and made first team All-NBA. His excellence isn’t new. The Brow has been marked as a potential future Best Player in the World and a preseason MVP favorite. Everyone knows how fearsome his game has become. There is no sleeping on Anthony Davis.
But to this point, all that power has been contained safely in the regular season. The Pelicans have only made the playoffs once prior in Davis’ career, and that was as an eighth seed, where New Orleans was swept by the ascendant Warriors in four quick games. The Pelicans are back in the NBA playoffs this year, and as a No. 6 seed against a Trail Blazers club that only beat New Orleans by a single game in the standings.
The Pelicans beat the Blazers 97-95 on Saturday night to steal home-court advantage and put the screws to Portland. Davis was masterful on both ends as New Orleans played a harassing style of defense on stud Blazers guards Damian Lillard and C.J. McCollum. Davis consistently did the spectacular on defense, and you know he did the same on offense, as he always has. From high-difficulty mid-range stepbacks to vicious alley-oop finishes, Davis showed it all on Saturday.
This is what no one really had to deal with before: an Anthony Davis at the height of his powers truly unleashed in the NBA playoffs.
Clearly, the Pelicans can beat the Blazers. We don’t know if they will. The defense New Orleans played completely gassed both Davis and Nikola Mirotic, and their fatigue in the fourth quarter helped Portland stage a comeback from 19 points down to have a chance to win. Pelicans coaches Alvin Gentry and Darren Erman might need to tone that down a bit or expand the playing rotation, even if it risks of letting Lillard and McCollum see some sunlight.
On the other end, you’d expect Portland coach Terry Stotts to throw more bodies at Davis and force Mirotic, Jrue Holiday, E’Twaun Moore, and Rajon Rondo to hit shots. But Holiday was superb in attacking the heart of the Blazers defense on Saturday, and so long as he can do that, Portland’s in a bind. It’s hard to play their only rim protector, Jusuf Nurkic, because then he either has to guard the versatile Davis or he has to run out on Mirotic, which erases the reason you’d want him out there: to help stop Holiday from getting to the rim.
If you put Nurkic on Davis, you have to run another player over the help whenever A.D. has the ball and a dribble, or Portland’s big guy is going to be barbecue chicken. That leaves a man open, and we saw in Game 1 than the Pelicans do have guys unafraid and effective at shooting from long-range.
And none of this gets into the transition game, where Rondo, Holiday, and Davis all feasted in Game 1, as they have much of the year. Rondo hits A.D. ahead a couple times and defenses start overcompensating, leaving a trailer like Mirotic open. It’s death.
This is all to say that, quite obviously, Anthony Davis causes huge, nightmarish matchup problems for opponents. We’re finally seeing how that truly manifests in a playoff series. It’s going to be fascinating to watch the chess match of schemes Stotts and Gentry play going into Tuesday’s Game 2.
There’s something more to be said about Rondo’s impact. The cerebral, enigmatic point guard is often fashioned as a coach on the floor, but that undersells it. Coaches are often portrayed as conservative, pragmatic, and sober. Mike D’Antoni is the outlier, while coaches like Stotts, Gregg Popovich, and Rondo’s old boss Doc Rivers are more common.
Rondo isn’t like those coaches. He’s wild. He sees everything happening on the floor and, as if like an A.I. controlled super villain bot from a comic book movie, he is genetically wired to attack the weakest spot, regardless of the risk-benefit analysis. He just goes for it as soon as sees it (and, like I said, he sees everything). This results in some absurd lobs to Davis — dunks that only Davis and Giannis Antetokounmpo could ever finish — and some absurd turnovers.
Right now, the good far outweighs the bad. Rondo’s defense remains suspect, but with Holiday (who played spectacularly on that end in Game 1 and all season, including a game-sealing block), Davis, and E’Twaun Moore out there, the Pelicans have it covered most of the time. Anthony Davis doesn’t need any help controlling the game from baseline to baseline. But Rondo adds potency to Davis’ vertical plane. Rondo’s bold passing allows Davis to use his length to soar not just past and around defenders, but above them too.
Portland got an overwhelming dose of the unleashed A.D. on Saturday, and they may not be the last team in the Western Conference to taste it the spring. We finally get to see, in a real way, just what Anthony Davis can do to the league the time of year that really matters.
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