After leaving Anthony Davis off of his NBA All-Defensive team ballot last season, new Los Angeles Lakers head coach JJ Redick explained why he didn’t include the star power forward.
Redick said that he believes Davis is one of the best defenders in the league, but ultimately the Lakers’ poor defensive performance kept him from making Redick’s ballot.
“There’s a big difference in being a top-10 defender and making an All-Defense team,” Redick said. “There’s a distinction between the two. Anthony Davis is one of the two or three best defensive players in the NBA. You certainly have to factor in the stats, the advanced stats and of course the team performance on defense. In both years, I weighed heavily on how the team performed defensively.”
Despite Redick excluding him from his ballot, Davis managed to make his third NBA All-Defensive First Team in 2024. He’s also a two-time member of the NBA All-Defensive Second Team.
Davis put up some of the best defensive numbers of his career during the 2023-24 season, averaging 2.3 blocks and 1.2 steals per game, but as Redick noted, the Lakers’ defense as a whole was less than impressive.
Los Angeles had the 17th-ranked defensive rating last season at 114.8, per NBA.com, and that number only slightly improved to 113.4 in the playoffs.
With Redick taking over as head coach of the Lakers, defensive improvement will be near the top of the priority list.
Los Angeles is coming off a disappointing 47-35 season that saw it reach the playoffs via the play-in tournament. After reaching the conference finals the season before, the Lakers were no match for the Denver Nuggets in the first round as they lost the series in five games.
The team now enters a new era under Redick and will look to compete for a championship behind Davis and LeBron James.