With all due respect to the late, great crooner Andy Williams, Christmas is not the most wonderful time of the year.
That designation belongs to what begins tomorrow: the Pelicans season, and, thus, the fifth season of The Anthony Davis Show.
Tomorrow, I’m going to put on one of my four Anthony Davis shirts and break all the furniture in my apartment in preparation for what will be the first of many 30-point performances in his first MVP season.
That’s right. I, Jacob of House Hamilton, Khal of Smoothie King Center, Defender of The Brow, the Irrational and Father of Pelicans, predict Anthony Marshon Davis will be ceremoniously presented the 2017 Kia NBA MVP Award in seven short months.
There’s no attempt to convince you he’s the best player in the league — because he’s not, although writing that caused me to keel over in pain. But the current state of the NBA is a perfect environment for him to recapture the luster lost from the Pellies’ most recent disappointing season.
First, the Pels’ framework provides a much-improved opportunity for pundits to appreciate his talents in the form of first-place votes.
It’s been brought to my attention, through reading national writers’ preseason opinions, that the Pelicans record is a direct reflection of AD’s work. Granted, their writing makes it painfully obvious they watched maybe a handful of Pels games last year, yet they consider themselves an authority on the subject. The main sense I get is that they believe last year was a drop off from his 2014-15 campaign when he got hosed out of the MVP award.
Well, if a “down season” by Davis’ standards means 24.3 points, 10.3 rebounds, two blocks and 1.3 steals per game, I’ll take that as a compliment, especially when considering it was accomplished with the Alonzo Gee’s of the world receiving heavy minutes beside him.
Many of the walking trash cans who donned Pels uniforms last season have since been replaced with sharpshooter Buddy Hield, two-way wing Solomon Hill, scrappy guard E’Twaun Moore, combo guard Langston Galloway and Davis’ college teammate Terrence Jones.
They’re what Jon Gruden so affectionately calls hard-working players “grinders.”
We’ve never had grinders on our team, and that — along with injuries — has kept us out of playoff contention. Not anymore. As long as this team stays healthy, it should land somewhere between the fifth and seventh seeds in the playoffs.
Speaking of health, AD put up those numbers with a torn labrum and bum knee.
With the Pels out of the playoff picture last season, he was shut down in favor of surgically repairing a torn labrum he had for three seasons, undergoing an ultrasonic debridement and injecting bone marrow in his left knee to correct a stress reaction and tendinopathy.
I’m just as clueless as you to what exactly that all means, but I know Carmelo Anthony’s jumper was seriously hampered when he had a torn labrum, which Google tells me causes pain and limited movement.
I liked the decision at the time, and I love it even more now seeing his utter dominance in preseason. He scored almost as many points as there were minutes and comfortably drained shots from behind the arc.
It must be a terrifying thought for Andre Drummond that Davis was injured when he dropped 59 points and 20 rebounds on Drummond’s head, and now a fully healthy Davis appears much improved.
Much of the logic behind my belief that AD will win MVP is that the last three MVPs seem out of contention.
It’s hard to imagine either of the last two MVPs, Kevin Durant and Steph Curry, will win considering they now play on the same team. There’s just not enough ball to go around on the Warriors for anyone to emerge as an MVP favorite.
And of course, there’s LeBron James. But let’s be honest, the regular season means nothing to him at this point. The MVP is the last of his worries — he already has four. At 31 and a shoo-in for the Hall of Fame, he’s just coasting through the regular season as he inches closer to all major all-time records, and will really start playing come postseason when it’s time to make a play for his fourth ring.
With the Pels earning a fifth through seventh seed led by a surgically-repaired AD and the three players who are better than him essentially disqualifying themselves from contention, he will emerge as the most logical option for MVP. Book it.