The Los Angeles Lakers lost the first game of the NBA playoffs last year against the Portland Trail Blazers. They were fine. They won the NBA title. This year's Game 1 loss to the Phoenix Suns might not be that much of a problem, either… but the Lake Show has to wonder if Anthony Davis is ready to shoulder the workload in the coming weeks.
Two statistics attached to Davis's perimeter shooting — combined with his 5-of-16, 0-of-2 3-point shooting line on Sunday versus the Suns — represent a real concern for the Lakers and head coach Frank Vogel heading into Game 2 of this series.
Start with this note for the Lakers' big man:
Anthony Davis is shooting 10/54 (18.5%) from 3 since returning from his Achilles injury. Leaving a bunch of them short. A big reason why I picked Suns in 6: Anthony Davis hasn’t been right all season.
— Tom Haberstroh (@tomhaberstroh) May 23, 2021
Continue with this:
AD's jump shooting in last year's playoffs remains one of the most amazing "out of nowhere" shooting runs we've seen. His recent regular season FG% on long 2s & 3s (per @bball_ref):
18-19: 34.1% / 33.1%
19-20: 32.2% / 33.0%
20-21: 32.1% / 26.2%2020 Playoffs: 55.2% / 38.3%
— Mason Ginsberg (@MasonGinsberg) May 7, 2021
People in the NBA — those within the Lakers' inner circle, and observers outside the team — are certainly paying attention to Davis's jump-shooting stats. Plenty of analysts think that Davis's Orlando bubble jump shooting was an outlier, and not indicative of how Davis is going to fare in the 2021 playoffs. The numbers presented above offer evidence in support of that conclusion. It doesn't mean the conclusion is some sort of guarantee that Davis won't become a great jump shooter in these playoffs, but it does mean this is an unresolved question which has to be dealt with one way or another.
If you are wondering why Davis might have shot so well in the bubble compared to other previous seasons, the answer is not nearly as complicated as you might think. The interruption of the 2020 NBA season for multiple months gave Davis — an injury-prone player — a chance to heal and refresh, bouncing back in the bubble with strong legs and a revitalized outlook.
This pandemic season is very different from the previous one. It's not so much the bubble itself (though the Lakers didn't have to travel across the country in the 2020 postseason), but the fact that there was no interruption of the season. This season's schedule was actually compressed, and Davis had to take nights off late in the season to manage his workload.
The Lakers didn't have to play two play-in games, but they did have to play one, which was one more play-in game than they hoped to play. The Suns had a full week off and — even with Chris Paul's injury problems — still looked much fresher than Los Angeles did in Game 1 on Sunday in Phoenix.
We will see in Game 2 if Anthony Davis is able to improve his jump shooting — maybe not to the 2020 level he displayed in the bubble, but certainly enough to make the difference for a Laker team which does not want to fall behind 2-0.
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