Anthony Davis believes he should be a 2023-24 Defensive Player of Year finalist: ‘The league doesn’t like me’
The 2023-24 NBA regular season concluded eight days ago and the league’s award voters were required to send in their final ballots for the different awards last week.
The league announced its top 3 finalists for each award on Sunday–including MVP, Most Improved Player and Rookie of the Year.
With that, some players are viewed by others–or themselves–as “snubs,” should they not crack that top-3.
One player who felt he was snubbed out of defensive player of the year voting was Lakers star big Anthony Davis, a four-time All-Defensive team honoree who made his ninth All-Star team honoree in 2023-24.
“I’ll never get it,” Davis told ESPN when asked about the award. “They’re not giving it to me. The league doesn’t like me. I’m the best defensive player in the league. I can switch 1 through 5. I can guard the pick-and-roll the best in the league, from a big standpoint. I block shots. I rebound.
“I don’t know what else to do. I’m over it. I’m just going to do what I got to do to help the team win and try to play for a championship. Accolades and individual awards, I’m done with those.”
The three finalists for the award were Minnesota’s Rudy Gobert (presumptive favorite), San Antonio star rookie Victor Wembanyama and Miami’s Bam Adebayo, arguably the NBA’s most versatile defender.
The 7-footer was last a finalist for the DPOY award in 2019-20, when he finished second behind Milwaukee’s Giannis Antetokounmpo, who garnered 75 of the 100 first-place votes. He’s finished top-10 in the award’s voting five times and in the top-5 thrice.
There is no question that Davis is one of the most feared and impactful rim protectors in the NBA. In 2023-24, he finished No. 8 in blocks per 75 possessions–a mark led by Wembanyama (4.3). For the second straight year, Davis also finished in the top-10 in block percentage plus the top-15 in win shares and defensive block plus-minus.
The Lakers were also 1.5 points per 100 possessions better defensively when Davis was on the floor than not; opposing teams’ rim attempt frequency dipped three percentage points (90th percentile amongst all bigs) and their rim field goal percentage was 4.4 percent worse (89th percentile) when Davis was on the floor, per Cleaning The Glass.
Those are respectable numbers, and Davis played a career-high 76 games (above the 65-game threshold) this season after missing 44 percent of his team’s games over the last three combined campaigns.
Davis isn’t the versatile defender that Adebayo is, nor is he the weak-side rim protector that Wembanyama and Gobert were this season. Neither is a knock on Davis. Gobert and Wembanyama, while they have flaws in space, do as good of a job as anyone deterring shots at or around the rim; Adebayo, who’s a finalist for the award for the first time in his career, perfectly encapsulates defensive versatility–both with his switchability and what he can toggle between schematically despite being 6-foot-9.
Perhaps Davis’ on-off impact for the NBA’s 17th-ranked defense wasn’t enough to sway voters. The field was fairly crowded, so I am not going to knock the voters for their decision-making, nor will I knock Davis for believing he should be the winner. You have to have that mindset if you’re going to be as good as Davis is.
A few of the awards–including the Most Improved Player, Sixth Man of the Year and Coach of the Year–will be announced this week. The timeframe for the DPOY award announcement has yet to be disclosed.
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