“Anthony Davis, we go as far as you go”: LeBron James and other Lakers veterans implored AD to lead the Lakers to championship glory

Anthony Davis within months of joining the Lakers led them to the Championship in 2020 alongside Finals MVP LeBron James.

Davis forced his way out of New Orleans Pelicans in 2019 to join LeBron James in Los Angeles. After all the drama surrounding his move, he did not take much time to settle in.

There were huge expectations even before his arrival. LeBron and the Lakers in the 2018-19 season failed to qualify for playoffs. James was on an 8-consecutive year NBA Finals run before that.

AD did not come up short. He helped the Lakers win Larry O’Brien after for the first time in 10 years, contributing on all ends of the floor.

Also read: “LeBron James has the best sneaker game on the Lakers roster”: 4-time Finals MVP pips Anthony Davis and Russell Westbrook in dressing room poll results

Anthony Davis believes ‘leading and sacrificing’ are the key to the Lakers’ Championship ambitions

Davis averaged over 26 points, 9 rebounds, 3 assists, 2 blocks, and 1.5 steals in his first season with the Lakers. Many still believe he should have been the Finals MVP over King James and Defensive Player of the year award over Giannis Antetokounmpo.

On the media day, before the new season starts AD talked about how the new-look Lakers are full of leadership and how they would need to sacrifice individually in order to win,

“I think I have the capability of doing so (lead the Lakers), now obviously we have a lot of great talent, Rondo is a great leader, LeBron, myself, Russ, Melo. And it takes a group for leadership.”

“Now the guys have talked to me about ‘this is your team, we go as you go.’ Kind of the same thing that we did my first year here, but I think adding a couple guys, it makes that job a lot easier, where it takes a lot of stress and a lot of load off of one guy. Where we can have four, five, six guys that can do what they have to do to win basketball games.”

“And at the end of the day we all have to sacrifice to reach our common goal, and that’s to win a championship.”

Davis did sacrifice in his first season, playing Robin to LeBron’s Batman, Lakers as a result ended up being the Champions and LeBron won the Finals MVP.

Also read: “Anthony Davis cannot be counted on to be on the court every night”: NBA analyst Stephen A. Smith slams Lakers superstar’s injury-prone nature ahead of championship season alongside LeBron James

It would be interesting to see how Russell Westbrook adjusts to idea of ‘sacrifice’.