Anthony Davis is back to making threes for the Lakers and defenses have no answers

Anthony Davis has opened the season taking and making more threes than he has in years, and it’s paying dividends for both him and the Lakers.

Nursing a three-point lead with 4:04 in the 4th quarter in a recent game against the Memphis Grizzlies, the Lakers had just secured a defensive rebound with LeBron James ready to set up the offense.

One play earlier, they got a dunk for James out of a three-man action involving James, Anthony Davis and Austin Reaves — a “Spain” pick and roll action in which Davis sets a ball screen for LeBron and, when AD then rolls to the rim, Reaves sets a back screen for him to confuse the defense and either open up a roll to the rim for AD or a driving angle for Bron.

That time, the lane opened up for Bron and threw down a monstrous slam.

Now, with the ball again, AD rushes over to LeBron the backcourt to talk to him about the upcoming possession, seemingly to tell him to run the same action again.

And that is exactly what the Lakers trio does, aligning in the same formation in the hopes again getting one of those three an easy basket. And everything looked the same, until it didn’t. Because this time, instead of rolling to the rim, AD pops away from the action to the left side of the floor above the break.

Simultaneously, LeBron stretches out his dribble to the right to occupy AD’s defender and spread him out, only to then fling the ball to AD camped above the arc. Davis catches the ball and then confidently steps into the open 3-pointer...and he buries it. Lakers go up six with 3:48 remaining.

They’d go on to win the game by five, with that three from Davis essentially serving as the breaking open point of the game that gave his team the breathing room they needed to fend off a shorthanded but frisky Memphis team.

That three actually wasn’t AD’s first big 3-pointer of the night, either. Just a minute early, with 4:51 left in the game, Davis stepped into a spot-up triple that broke a 108-108 tie, a shot that pulled the tug-of-war rope slightly back in the Lakers' direction. It was also a huge bucket for AD, who had sat for much of the second half after getting his fifth foul way back in the third period.

That Davis was able to recapture his rhythm, not just to hit the aforementioned huge threes, but another mid-range jumper earlier in the quarter personifies the comfort level he’s showing with his jumper this season, especially from behind the arc.

Through 13 games this season, AD is shooting 42.9% on 2.3 3-point attempts per game. It’s the highest number of threes per game he’s taken in three seasons, dating back to when he took 2.8 per game in the season after the Lakers won the title.

As for the percentage, Davis has never shot higher than 34.0%, which he did way back in the 2017-18 season for the Pelicans. So, needless to say, this is a very hot shooting stretch for him in what should be noted is a small sample to begin the season.

And while that sample size matters — I do not expect him to shoot the ball this well the rest of the season — the rhythm Davis is in as a shooter should not be dismissed. Including the two threes vs. the Grizzlies, he’s made four of the five triples he’s taken in the clutch, per the NBA’s tracking data, tied for 2nd most in the NBA.

Further, he’s already had five games in which he’s connected on multiple 3-pointers in a contest, matching his season-long totals from the two previous seasons — where he played 56 and then 76 games — in just 13 games.

To summarize, then, Davis is taking more threes per game than he has in three seasons, is making them at a career-best rate, and is using the long ball as a reliable weapon to make defenses pay in the most critical parts of close games. Yes, the sample is small and we need to see him continue to shoot at this volume and (somewhat close to this) accuracy, but it’s very encouraging to see this aspect of his game return and to do so as resoundingly as it has to begin the year.

You see, when Davis shoots the ball from deep at all and especially this well, it puts the defense in a lose-lose situation.

Davis is already one of the more gifted rollers and paint attackers in the league. He is elite as a finisher on lobs, dump offs, in the short roll, on post ups or just straight up attacks on drives or post-ups.

Because of that, the defense must devote resources to key in on trying to slow him down from simply terrorizing them in the paint. But if he’s also going to be able to counter those attempts to load up toward the rim to slow him down by making jumpers when spotting up or picking-and-popping behind the arc, there really is no good answer for him.

After the Lakers’ win over the Spurs when AD went 2-4 from deep, both of which came in the fourth quarter with one of those being in the clutch, Austin Reaves spoke about his big man’s shooting, what it means for the team as a whole and how it impacts the opposing defense.

“It just makes the floor spacing extra, you know you can get to the rim whenever,” Reaves said. “Big men’s tendencies when guards or whoever’s driving is to go contest shots. So, when (AD) is shooting it like that, they kinda have to second guess themselves and if they do go [to contest the drive], you have a wide-open three. If they don’t go, you create in the paint. So, it’s big for our team.”

Yes indeed, it is big. But even beyond the makes, I’d argue it is important for AD to simply continue to seek out these shots and take them when they’re open. More than just makes and misses, defenses react to volume and the tendencies of a player.

So, if AD shows that he’ll take the 3-pointer more often, defenses will begin to close out on him more, which won’t just benefit his teammates through a better spaced floor, but it will benefit Davis, who will be able to attack those closeouts to get to the paint and either score or draw fouls.

This, in turn, allows AD to score more easily and efficiently and only reinforces teams’ desires to keep him out of the paint in the first place, which then only leads to the jumpers AD does get being more open. And that helps him be in more of a rhythm, and, hopefully, leads to more of these shots going in.

Then the cycle begins anew, with AD looking like a player who is nearly impossible to defend while hovering at or near the top of the league in points per game.

Before the season started in the leading up to training camp, JJ Redick was asked about the decline in AD’s jump shooting in recent years. The question, which was rooted in the numbers, was basically wondering if Davis would ever be a reliable jump shooter again and how Redick might account for that or how he might deal with it.

Redick said he “had a theory” as to why AD’s numbers were down and that while he declined to share it right then, if his theory proved right and AD’s numbers turned around, JJ would share it with them.

Well, it’s early and we’ve still got a ways to go, but if this continues, Redick may have a theory to share soon.

You can follow Darius on Twitter at @forumbluegold.