The Los Angeles Lakers need a miracle to make their 2022-23 season viable. With LeBron James out for a period of time due to a groin injury, everyone in LA is looking at Anthony Davis to be the player the Lakers traded for and single-handedly help carry the Lakers to a better record. Davis should be the leader of this team, with an increasingly heavy load for LeBron leading to constant injuries for the 20-year veteran as well.
Former champion Channing Frye was a fantastic stretch big for his time and was a rotational player on the 2016 Cleveland Cavaliers, alongside LeBron James. Frye has commented on AD and called him the greatest what-if in the league.
"Go out there and just lay it on the line"@channingfrye tells @TermineRadio & @Jumpshot8 his advice for Anthony Davis pic.twitter.com/gG5aHpqOw1
— SiriusXM NBA Radio (@SiriusXMNBA) November 13, 2022
“Anthony Davis is the biggest ‘what-if’ in the league. He can go from 8th to winning a championship, that’s how good he is. He has lost his youthful exuberance for the game of basketball. Whether it’s injuries, whether mentally, he has an excuse like ‘we don’t have shooting’ or ‘it’s hard to win’, I don’t know but that’s what it looks like to me. He goes to the game going ‘even if I do well, we’re not going to win’. He needs to go Kobe mentality, ‘I don’t give an F who’s out here with me, I’m going to will this team to win’. It’s exhausting, and it’s a lot to put on his shoulders, but when you’re in the MVP conversation when you’re a generational basketball player build-wise, you have to do that. It’s just a responsibility when you’ve been given that blessing…
Go out there and lay it on the line. Get an IV after the game, I don’t care. Sacrifice your body, take care of it, and just make sure you’re available. Invest in the game. When you’re comfortable with losing, you’ve lost yourself as a basketball player.”
Taking an IV might not be safe if the sole goal is to have a better performance in a single basketball game out of 82, but AD has the talent and willpower needed to carry a team to win.
Will The Lakers Move On From Anthony Davis?
With the way the 2022-23 season is progressing, the Lakers need to accept that LeBron James and Anthony Davis are no longer a championship duo. There’s simply not enough around them, and the Lakers can’t get the assets to put better players around them without trading one of them.
Trading LeBron would yield a low value due to his age and injuries, so the Lakers are forced to look at AD for a possible move, as teams will still buy into the fact that he is supposed to be a top-5 talent, but injuries keep restricting him.
While fans expect AD to get moved, the Lakers have made it clear that they don’t want to get AD off this team. If they can get a high return for him, the Lakers would be foolish to at least not see what’s out there on the market.
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