Los Angeles Lakers star Anthony Davis has been named NBA Western Conference Player of the Week for games played from Tuesday, Oct. 22, through Sunday, Oct 27, the league announced. Boston Celtics star Jayson Tatum was named NBA Eastern Conference Player of the Week.
The weekly award is Davis’ sixth as a member of the Lakers and 11th overall in his career. It’s a well-deserved one as Davis led the Lakers to a perfect 3-0 week to kick off the season with three 30-plus point performances.
In the three games, the 31-year-old averaged a league-best 34.0 points on 57.1 FG%, 40.0 3FG% and 80.0 FT%) to go along with 11.0 rebounds, 3.3 assists, 1.7 steals and 2.3 blocks. The Lakers are 3-0 to start a season for the first time since 2010, beating three tough Western Conference teams at home in the Minnesota Timberwolves, Phoenix Suns and Sacramento Kings.
To kick off the season, Davis had 36 points, 16 rebounds, four assists, one steal and three blocks in an Opening Night victory over Minnesota. He followed that up with 35 points, eight rebounds, four assists, one steal and two blocks in a comeback win over the Suns.
To finish off the week, Davis recorded 31 points, nine rebounds, two assists, three steals and two blocks in another comeback victory against the Kings. He had 14 points in the forth quarter alone to cap off that win.
Davis joined Elgin Baylor, Kobe Bryant and Jerry West as the only Lakers players to start a season with three consecutive 30-point performances.
LeBron James benefitting from attention on Anthony Davis
With the Lakers featuring Anthony Davis on offense and him putting up big numbers as a result, defenses have naturally paid a lot of attention to the big man. LeBron James recently spoke on how much that is helping him and the other Lakers players.
“In every way, shape and facet. He commands so much attention,” James said. “Defensively, he continues to dominate defensive rebounds at a high level. When we get to our switching groups, he can switch out on the perimeter and make it tough on them. Offensively, we can find him on mismatches. A lot of teams in our league like to switch guards onto bigs. We have one guy you can’t really switch a guard onto. That creates mismatches. We encourage, coaches encourage him, to shoot that three ball. Probably the biggest shot of the night is him making that three tonight. That made it easy on me. All I got to do is get it on time and on target.”
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