Dhe maneuver looked as if an invisible hand had rearranged a large part of the planets in the solar system. Because it was a transaction that only happens every few years in the NBA. Involved were: three teams, seven players and a bundle of assurances for several future youth drafts, in which clubs stock up on new talent once a year. Moritz Wagner and Isaac Bonga landed with the stroke of a pen and without anyone asking them, at their new employer in Washington, almost 4,000 kilometers further east. Three young Americans found themselves at the bottom of the Mississippi. And all so that the Los Angeles Lakers could get a player who is blessed with a rare quality: With him every team will be noticeably better.
Fourteen months later, the response to the complicated swap that landed 27-year-old center Anthony Davis with the Los Angeles Lakers can still be felt. The Lakers, who have dominated the NBA over the course of decades with legendary extra-long guys like Wilt Chamberlain, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Shaquille O’Neal, are once again at the top after a long low and are aiming for the seventeenth championship title.
Every swap creates uncertainty
The most important factor in this development: the commitment of the 2.08 meter tall player with the number 3, whose skills come into play both on the defensive and on the offensive: when he blocks balls, collects ricochets, creates space under the basket, to score or when he throws from a distance. On average, Davis came to 28.8 points, 9.3 rebounds in the play-offs, with a hit rate of 57.1 percent. Even his attempts to convert threesomes are remarkable: every third throw ends up in the basket. Two years ago, the Lakers signed LeBron James, the best basketball player of his generation. But it was only with Davis that the team became a title contender. The clear favorite of the final series against the Miami Heat, which begins on Wednesday (3:00 a.m. CEST on Thursday) in the quarantine bubble of Walt Disney World in Orlando.
In the National Basketball Association, putting teams of two or even three outstanding players together in order to hold their own in play-offs of up to seven games each is no easy exercise. The league, with its structural struts such as the draft, which nurtures bad teams, and the salary cap, which caps the level of top salaries, ensures that no club can simply buy a squad of top players. Every swap creates uncertainty. Because for the expensive new addition, a team has to give up a lot of substance in order to provide the equivalent value demanded by the NBA. Anyone who risks it anyway works with a simple calculation: The conversion should enable quick success, at the expense of long-term planning.
He brings the team up
It is no coincidence that Davis ended up with the Lakers. It was clear to him that LeBron James would need a man of a special caliber to build his track record in Los Angeles after championship successes with the Miami Heat (2012 and 2013) and the Cleveland Cavaliers (2016) when he sold for 154 million dollars and four years in 2018 signed in California. There were hardly any attractive options. And those became even fewer when Kawhi Leonard (from the Toronto Raptors to the Los Angeles Clippers) and Kevin Durant (from the Golden State Warriors to the Brooklyn Nets) made it clear that they would rather play in teams where they were considered number one will. The perspective for Davis was different. For him, it had only been enough to play-offs twice in New Orleans in seven years.
However, his ambitions continued. A statistically sound analysis, as it is carried out by the programmers of the popular computer game “NBA2K20”, showed that it belongs to the top ten players in the league, as the strongest center by far. “That’s why I wanted to be his teammate and why I brought him to us,” revealed LeBron James after the Lakers knocked out Denver in five semi-final series. “I wanted him to experience something that he hadn’t seen before in this league.” The two had already discussed it shortly after the move. “When I got here,” Davis recalled, “he told me he was going to give me my first championship ring.”
LeBron James is now 35 years old and not far from the end of his career. He worked hard to get the Lakers out of the basement of the table. Nuggets trainer Michael Malone was impressed. It is unbelievable what “LeBron is doing at this point in his career, how he is still finding ways to improve and getting every team he plays in to the top.” It has become more difficult with every season. He was absent for months last season due to an injury. The Lakers missed the play-offs. The final series took place for the first time since 2010 without him. Everything is the same this season. An atmosphere Davis has long got used to: “These guys only want one thing: the championship.”
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