Anthony Davis is coming into this season with a lot to prove after injuries derailed his and the Los Angeles Lakers’ title defense in 2020-21.
At the Lakers’ annual Media Day, Davis spoke about how healthy and ready to go he is for the 2021-22 season, benefitting from a full, normal offseason.
In addition to his play on the court, this will also be a big season for Davis as far as leadership goes. Even though a majority of the players on the Lakers roster are older than Davis, they will all be following his lead as the lone superstar in his prime.
Davis spoke about his role as a leader this season and even gave some insight about what other players on the team have been telling him.
“I think I have the capability of doing so,” Davis said of making the Lakers his team. “Also we have a lot of great talent on this team, we have a lot of great leaders with LeBron, myself, Russ, Melo, it takes a group for leadership. Obviously I know that the guys have talked to me about this is your team, we go as you go, and kind of the same thing that we did my first year here.
“But I think adding a couple guys, it makes that job a lot easier where it takes a lot of stress and a lot of load off of one guy. We can have four or five, six guys that can do what they have to do to win basketball games. And at the end of the day, we all have to sacrifice to be able to reach our common goal and that’s winning the championship.”
Davis is right that the Lakers will have a number of leaders this season such as LeBron James, Russell Westbrook and Rajon Rondo.
Having a veteran team means that every player should understand the task at hand, which is winning a championship. With leaders like Davis constantly pushing that message though, that should only help keep the ship floating in the right direction.
Davis: Lakers are motivated by jokes about age
Many critics have been using the Lakers’ age as a negative, believing they are too old to stay healthy and compete for a championship.
Davis has been hearing the noise and said the Lakers are motivated by it.
“Yes. I think our entire organization is motivated by that, our team is motivated by that. It’s like people not counting us out because we’re the Lakers and who our team is, but they’re counting us out because we’re old. And we see it and it’s fun, it’s exciting. We’re just excited to get started and everybody here has touched on it, all that social media, Melo has said something, Russ, Bron is the most vocal about it, but everyone is motivated to get started and show everyone that, I forgot who said it, maybe I forgot the name of the song, but age ain’t nothing but a number.”
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