One thing that has defined the Los Angeles Lakers all season long — besides the dominant play of their two superstars, LeBron James and Anthony Davis — is the chemistry throughout the roster.
From Davis and James all the way down to those who don’t play as much like Talen Horton-Tucker and Jared Dudley, there is a clear camaraderie. Many players mention that chemistry for what allowed them to get to the NBA Finals in their first season together.
However, even teams with the best of relationships are bound to have disagreements on and off the court, and this happened between Davis and James during Game 2 of the NBA Finals. After a blown defensive assignment, the two stars were visibly frustrated with one another.
However, Davis stressed that there was nothing to worry about, and that their disagreement only came from a place of love and respect. “We just try to both hold each other accountable. We both want to be great, we both want to dominate the game,” Davis explained.
“We had some blown coverages on the defensive end and we were both frustrated that we had multiple coverages that were blown tonight. It was just all piling up and we just kind of had that moment, put it behind us and kept playing.
“Like I said, it’s not always going to be pretty. It always seem like everything is good with me and him, and we do have our times where we do yell at each other and we do argue, but we know it’s coming from a good place, so we get over it quickly and move on to the next play.
“We are just two guys that really want to win and have a love for the game.”
With the Lakers just two wins away from their 17th championship and first title in a decade, James and Davis are fully committed to winning. Little disagreements in the heat of a Finals game are unavoidable, but the mutual respect they have for another allows them to get past those moments in pursuit of a championship.
No jealousy between James and Davis
One of the things that has allowed Davis and James to thrive together as Lakers teammates has been the fact that they are not jealous of one another.
“I think that’s the best thing. In professional sports, you have guys that join forces to become alpha males,” James said. “That’s what they call them. Two guys that have been dominant in a specific sport on their own respective teams, and they get together and they talk about how dominant they can be and they talk about this is going to be this and that.
“I believe jealousy creeps in a lot. And that is the absolute contrary of what we are. We know who we are, we know what we’re about. We want the best, seriously, every single day, both on and off the floor, for one another. We’re just not jealous of one another. I think that you align that with respect, I think the sky’s the limit.”
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