Sports
Anthony Davis: Destroyer of the Basketball-Reference Play Index – Bourbon Street Shots
The Pelicans are now 10 games into the 82-game NBA season, sitting at 6-4 after splitting a road back-to-back in Portland and Sacramento. The biggest single contributor to New Orleans’ winning record, of course, is the incredible play of Anthony Davis. While trying to measure just how great he has been so far, we can point to lots of raw advanced stats: PER, Win Shares, RAPM (regularized adjusted plus-minus), and VORP (value over replacement player), to name a few. While each statistic is quite useful determining a player’s overall utility, they are also very general in the sense that they don’t measure exactly what that player is doing on the court. Thankfully, we have an incredible resource at our disposal to help us dig deeper – the Play Index search tool on Basketball-Reference.com. Below are a few queries that most effectively exemplify Davis’ statistical impact, as well as current and historical NBA players that his production most closely resembles (and trumps). Spoiler alert: the results are pretty staggering.
A) Offensive Impact
Query: Players in 2014-15 averaging at least 30 points, 10 rebounds, & under 3 turnovers per 100 possessions
Qualifying players: Anthony Davis, Dirk Nowitzki, LaMarcus Aldridge, Ryan Anderson, Al Jefferson
Notes: Starting simple here. Those who have followed Davis know that he easily clears this threshold; AD is currently averaging over 35 points, 15 rebounds, and under 2 turnovers per 100 possessions. LaMarcus comes closest to Davis based on this criteria, but his rebounding in particular falls far short.
B) Defensive Impact
Query: Players in 2014-15 averaging at least 2 steals, 2 blocks, & under 4.5 fouls per 100 possessions
Qualifying Players: Anthony Davis, DeAndre Jordan, Marc Gasol
Notes: Davis once again finds himself in good company, but in reality, AD is in a category all to himself. Davis is averaging over 3 steals, 5 blocks, and under 3 fouls per 100 possessions, but by simply moving to 2.5+ blocks & < 4 fouls (and keeping 2+ steals), both Jodan & Gasol’s names disappear.
Query: Players since 1985 totaling at least 160 points, 80 rebounds, 30 blocks, and 15 steals
Qualifying Players: Anthony Davis (x2), Hakeem Olajuwon (x7), David Robinson (x5)
Notes: Again, we use basic box score stats to evaluate two-way production from big men similar to Davis. While per-game averages of 16 points, 8 rebounds, 3 blocks, and 1.5 steals sounds pretty damn versatile, it may not sound THAT elite. Then you look at the players who have done it – only two in the past ~30 years apart from AD.
Query: Players since 1985 with at least 5 games in a season with at least 24 points, 11 rebounds, 3 blocks, and 0-1 turnovers
Qualifying Players: Anthony Davis, Shaquille O’Neal (x4), Hakeem Olajuwon (x3), Amar’e Stoudemire, Patrick Ewing, David Robinson (x2)
Notes: The individual record for number of games in a season with a 24/11/3/0-1 stat line is 7, held by Shaq. Anthony Davis has done it 5 times in his first 10 games, so he is on pace to break O’Neal’s record with roughly 66 games to go.
Query: At least 7 games in a row with at least 14 points, 1 block, and 1 steal in past 6 seasons
Qualifying Players: Anthony Davis (x2), LeBron James (x2), Andrew Bogut, Dwight Howard (x2), Josh Smith
Notes: Anthony Davis has accumulated at least 14 points, 1 block, and 1 steal in each of the Pelicans’ first 10 games this season. No player has topped that streak since Kevin Garnett in the 2003-04 NBA season, who reached 13 straight games. Of course, this is an active streak for AD, so he has a chance to stretch it to 11 on Friday night in Denver.
Query: Players below age 25 in NBA history with a PER over 25 & Win Shares per 48 Minutes over .27
Qualifying Players: Anthony Davis*, Chris Paul (x2), Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (x2), LeBron James, Kevin Durant, Michael Jordan
Notes: The asterisk is next to AD’s name for an obvious reason – he has only played 10 games. That being said, the names on this list clearly indicate how incredible Davis’ play has been to date, and if AD can even maintain 70% of his PER (36.1) and 80% of his WS/48 (.346) numbers, he’ll still be a member of this elite group at the end of this season.
Query: Players with a true shooting percentage of at least 56%, at least 1 steal per game, and more blocked shots than fouls
Qualifying Players: Anthony Davis, David Robinson (x7), Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (x3), Hakeem Olajuwon (x2), Bill Walton
Notes: Above all else, this query should serve as an indicator of how disciplined Anthony Davis has been defensively so far this season. Only 78 qualifying players in NBA history have ever totaled more blocked shots than fouls committed; to do so while both creating turnovers and serving as a source of efficient scoring is a rare skill that makes AD even more special. Oh, and Davis has TWICE as many blocked shots as fouls so far, which is absolutely unprecedented.
Query: Players in NBA history over 21 points, 11 rebounds, 2.5 blocks, and under 2.75 turnovers per 36 minutes
Qualifying Players: Anthony Davis, Shaquille O’Neal (x3), David Robinson (x2), Tim Duncan (x3)
Notes: This final list combines what are arguably Davis’ most attractive skills and compares them to the NBA players with the most similar skill sets throughout league history. It is difficult to decide what is more impressive – the efficiency with which AD is churning out these numbers, or the incredibly young age at which he has already shown the ability to perform at this level. Regardless, his all-around impact on every game he has played thus far is inescapably clear.
While the lists given above sufficiently depict how unprecedented Anthony Davis’ start to the 2014-15 NBA season has been, there are certainly many more ways to do so with such a unique and special player. As the season wears on, it will be really fun to see if Davis can maintain or improve his place on each of these lists. While it is unlikely that AD continues to play at quite this level, he could certainly come close; if he does, the New Orleans Pelicans could surprise a lot of people this season.
Mason Ginsberg
Can we say AD’s start of the season has been historic or unprecedented?
504ever I would say unprecedented, mostly due to his number of fouls and turnovers. You can find a handful of guy in history that make as many good plays. But none that make that many good plays with the absence of bad ones that result in fouls or turnovers
The other night when he picked up that foul on a driving Casspi, it almost felt strange…
Michael McNamara 504ever
http://www.usatoday.com/staff/2529/sam-amick/ used “unprecedented” on his AD article in USA Today!
Davis is the MVP so far this year. I’m not sure it’s even that close. Granted we’re only about 15 games in but he’s been INSANE. He still has some things he needs to learn on defense (yes, he can get better, which is scary) but he is far and away the best big man in a league which is seriously short on traditional big man. I just wish I had more chances to watch him play where I live–I’m just outside Philly.I almost feel like I’m watching a young Wilt here.
Michael McNamara 504ever Unprecedented is fair. There have been big guys who’ve had better starts to seasons, but not many, and most of them had names like Wilt, Kareem Shaqq & so forth.Also, just out of respect for the position, can we start calling AD a center? I know you can make the argument that he’s a 4 but really he ‘s a traditional center back from the days when we HAD great centers.
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