Anthony Davis spent a chunk of his Lakers career hauling around a body he didn't want and asking for help nobody gave him. The front office that pushed him into that role is the one that failed here, and the pile-on calling him soft has it backwards.
Start with what he actually said. On the Numbers On The Board podcast, recorded around Washington's Media Day, Davis laid out why he wanted a center next to him in his final stretch with Los Angeles. "The strength training I was doing was because I knew I was playing center, going against Joel Embiid and Jokic," he said. "I had always played around 250, but that year I got to 265, probably 268. I didn't like it." He asked the team for another big to share the load. In his words, "it just didn't happen whatever."
Davis didn't choose that body. The team needed him at center, so he packed on fifteen-plus pounds of muscle and gave up a step and a shot, then played heavy minutes at the five through entire playoff series. That costs lift and lateral quickness, the things that made him Davis in the first place.
The Lakers already knew the answer. They won a championship with Davis at power forward and JaVale McGee and Dwight Howard splitting time at center. "I feel like I've always been at my best when I've been at the four and having a big out there," Davis said. "We know it worked when we won a championship with JaVale and Dwight at the five and I'm at the four." He's right. That was the blueprint. The organization proved it, then spent years refusing to run it back.
Look at the 2024 first round. The Lakers ran Davis out at center against the defending-champion Nuggets with Rui Hachimura, a power forward his whole career, starting next to him. Davis averaged 41.6 minutes and 27.8 points a night carrying that frontcourt by himself. Denver won the series 4-1. The front office put its best player exactly where he'd warned them it would wear him down.
The defense of the front office is that elite, mobile, floor-spacing centers are scarce and cost a fortune, and nobody can conjure one out of thin air. Sure. But Davis never asked for Jokic. The version that won a ring was McGee and Howard, two bigs who were available cheap, whose whole job was to eat minutes at the five so Davis didn't have to. You don't need to break the bank to find a body who lets your franchise cornerstone play his best position. The Lakers found it once. They stopped looking.
Even if a good center was hard to land, parking Davis at the five for stretch after stretch may have ground down his health and shortened the years he had left. That's the indictment: they traded his durability for a roster shortcut and got bounced anyway.
Davis is in Washington now, back at the four, telling anyone who'll listen that people forgot who he is. Maybe they did. The people who should feel worst about that are the ones who spent years making him play a position he begged to leave.
