Winning the NCAA Tournament’s Most Outstanding Player, the Naismith Player of the Year and leading your team to a national championship as a freshman is an incredible feat.
What might be more incredible is the amount of swagger to make a unibrow look cool. There is little doubt who will be the number one overall pick in the NBA draft come June, but do not drink the Anthony Davis Kool-Aid quite yet.
Despite the accolades and the terrific play by the young hoopster, Davis will not immediately become the superstar everyone believes he is destined to be in the NBA.
In addition to going to a team that would probably lose to Davis’s Kentucky squad, Davis possesses a limited offensive game and is rail thin. Expect Davis to struggle mightily as a rookie.
Davis struggles to get his offensive game going at times. In the national championship game against Kansas, Davis shot 1-of-10 from the floor and was held scoreless in the first half.
In seven of Kentucky’s 40 games this season, Davis scored in single digits. He averaged just over 14 points per game, not an extraordinary amount. Granted, some of this can be attributed to Kentucky’s star-studded team.
At 6 feet 10 inches and a mere 220 pounds, Davis is going to need to bulk up unless he wants get bullied by the big men of the NBA. Davis’ slight stature will put him at a disadvantage with positioning down in the low block.
On top of this, the team with the greatest chance of drafting Davis is the woeful Charlotte Bobcats, a team with a chance to finish with the lowest winning percentage in NBA history.
If Charlotte does not win the Unibrow Sweepstakes, the Wizards, Cavaliers, Raptors, Hornets, Kings and Warriors all have high chances of winning the first overall pick. The majority of these teams do not have many players who are formidable enough to pair with Davis.
Davis will be expected to change the entire culture of one of these abysmal defensive teams, which is the most important gauge of how successful teams are in the NBA.
Fortunately for Davis’ future suitor, Kentucky ranked _first_ in the country in defensive two-point field goal percentage and overall defensive field goal percentage.
Davis’ ability to protect the rim has led scouts to compare him to Kevin Garnett. I believe he will be more similar to Tyson Chandler, who played a key role in the Dallas Mavericks’ first NBA Championship a season ago.
Even if Davis is a poor man’s KG, he must polish his offensive game and change the culture of an NBA franchise that will definitely need his extraordinary ability.
Despite the inadequacies Davis possesses, he continually found a way to win while developing an identity in the process. Just as Dikembe Mutumbo waved his finger at every blocked shot, Davis’ unibrow is an identity unique to him that strikes fear in his opponents. For a freshman, that identity is pretty remarkable.
Just as Davis found a way to get it done on the court, he found a way to develop an identity as the goofy looking freshman with a unibrow, who time and time again had the most impact upon each game he played in at the collegiate level. Even if he is not the best player on the floor, do not anticipate that to change throughout Davis’ entire career when he suits up for an NBA team next season.