LeBron James and Anthony Davis have been a two-man playoff wrecking crew for the Los Angeles Lakers. James’s former teammate Dwyane Wade had some comments regarding the pair.
The two-man team of LeBron James and Anthony Davis have been a destructive force for the Los Angeles Lakers so far in the playoffs with no end in sight to their dominance. Two games into the NBA Finals against the Miami Heat, the duo has an incredible net rating of +15.9 when they’re on the floor together. When they play together in the playoffs, the Lakers have a rebounding percentage of 55.4 and a true shooting percentage of 60.4.
The two have combined for a staggering 56.3 points, 20.0 rebounds, 12.4 assists and a combined 4.4 steals and blocks per game. It’s hard to come up with a better duo for playoff basketball when scoring, playmaking and rebounding all become more difficult and vital in high-leverage moments.
LeBron James has had some outstanding teammates in his career. With the Miami Heat, he had Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh. With the Cleveland Cavaliers in his second stint, he had Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love. But none of those players fit with LeBron anywhere near as well as Anthony Davis has this season and in these playoffs.
Wade made this very observation in agreement with a tweet by ESPN analyst Kendrick Perkins during Game 2 against the Miami Heat on Friday night. Perkins opened the topic by declaring:
"With All due respect to the great @DwyaneWade I believe that Anthony Davis compliments (sic) Lebron better than any other player he’s ever played with."
It’s hard to argue against it, and the next best candidate to have a claim to this role (with all due respect to Kyrie Irving, who is definitely not the next best candidate) is Dwyane Wade. As it happens, Wade agrees wholeheartedly with Perkins’ assertion as follows:
"I agree Big Perk"
The kind of dominance LeBron and Davis have displayed in the playoffs can’t be easily replicated, and it hasn’t been near duplicated in all of NBA history. Currently up 2-0 in the NBA Finals against an injury-ravaged Miami Heat team, LeBron’s fourth championship and Davis’s first is fait accompli.
Even against more fit competition than the battered Heat, these Los Angeles Lakers would be hard to stop by any team in today’s NBA. The peak Golden State Warriors of Stephen Curry and Kevin Durant would have been an incredible matchup, but you can only beat who they put in front of you.
A championship won against the Heat in the NBA bubble is no small task. Getting to the end of this unheard-of scenario and taking home a title will be a worthy feat, and it takes every bit of the LeBron and AD dynamic duo to get the job done.
Winning the 2019-20 title would bring LeBron James’s record in the Finals to 4-6. It’s not a spotless record, but it would be an incredible feat nonetheless if the Lakers are able to get the job done as things appear now.