Anthony Davis was nervous.
The feeling wasn’t foreign. It happens before every game, he says, whether it’s the NBA Finals or the preseason. Even for a player who’s won it all.
The hours ahead of tip-off on this particular Saturday afternoon in February were spent pondering how his new fan base would receive him and his prolific two-way talents. Davis had the emotional intelligence to understand people across the city were still in varying stages of grief over the move that brought him to Dallas, as the centerpiece of a trade some characterized as the most lopsided in sports history.
Davis’ tension faded – as it always does – as soon as the ball was tossed into the air. There was no more time to think. It was time to play.
Four minutes and 26 seconds later, Davis sprung into the air and tip-slammed his own miss over an unexpected Alperen Sengun. The sold-out crowd of 20,303 showered Davis with cheers before he delivered a message of his own.
“I’M HERE!” Davis yelled into the stands, as if to reassure the skeptics that he’s the person who can replace what they wish they never lost.
ANTHONY DAVIS IS HERE 😤
— NBA TV (@NBATV) February 8, 2025
6 PTS, 4 REB, 3 AST, 1 BLK in just FOUR MINUTES 😳 pic.twitter.com/6n7ALQs8vc
Davis arrives in Dallas with a golden opportunity to cement his legacy and take the reins of a franchise whose general manager decided to end the Luka Doncic era, trading a wildly popular, generational talent who had accepted the proverbial baton from Dirk Nowitzki.
Though the shoes he’s tasked to fill are uniquely immense, Davis brings championship pedigree, All-NBA talent and the determination to give a heartbroken fan base hope.
The Mavericks are building a new identity centered around Kyrie Irving and Davis, whose mission is to show a distraught fan base why his unparalleled two-way skills make him the one who can lead them to another title.
It’s a familiar yet unprecedented position for Davis. He’s had the keys to a franchise before, as the No. 1 overall pick in New Orleans, but not under these circumstances. The torch is in his hands — and the pressure of carrying it — as it was for Doncic and Nowitzki.
“I don’t really believe in adversity,” Davis told The Dallas Morning News while leaning against a wall inside the Mavericks’ practice facility. “I’ve always been a solutions-based guy. Here’s a problem. What’s the solution now? I could sit here and complain and be sad or mad or angry, whatever emotion you want to attach to that feeling. … For me, it’s a game. It’s basketball. I’ve trained my mind to go through these things.”
Davis’ attitude toward challenges suggests the weight won’t be a burden. That 13 years of experience will allow him to compartmentalize fans wanting general manager Nico Harrison to be fired for the trade that brought him to Dallas. That it’s just about basketball.
But tuning out that noise is easier said than done.
He’ll be leading a team vastly different from the start of the 2024-25 season, with more change to come. In less than two weeks, the Mavericks will find out their lottery pick in the June 25 draft, with the best possible outcome being the No. 1 slot and the chance to select Duke freshman Cooper Flagg.
It’s a long shot, but pairing any top-11 pick with Davis, Irving and the rest of the Mavericks’ versatile core could be a step toward fulfilling Harrison’s vision of a defensive-minded championship team.
“I think he has a great opportunity here with us in Dallas and he wants to show that he is one of the best in the world,” head coach Jason Kidd said. “But sometimes we take that for granted because it looks so easy. Three blocks, 10 rebounds, 25 points a night. Sometimes I guess that can be boring. Not sexy.”
Why is Davis the man for this moment? Experience helps, but his unrivaled accolades on his basketball resume suggest a title in Dallas is possible. Davis is one of the most decorated players to pick up a basketball, the only person to win an NCAA championship, NBA championship, Olympic gold medal, NBA In-Season Tournament and FIBA World Cup. He was also named to the NBA’s 75th anniversary team, a list of the greatest players since the league’s inception.
“He’s proven,” said Mavericks assistant coach Jared Dudley, who won the 2020 title with Davis and the Los Angeles Lakers. “I think for him now, if you want to call it adversity, he’s trying to help a fan base and community who lost one of their star players, showing that he’s up to the challenge that not only Nico [Harrison] talks about, but also that he has in himself. He holds himself to a high standard more than anyone else and wants to show Dallas what type of player he is.”
Chicago roots
Davis started becoming that player at Perspectives Charter School in Chicago, where Cortez Hale was entertaining a job as a coach for the varsity boys basketball team when he first laid eyes on him.
Davis, then a sophomore guard, stood a lanky 6-2 – months away from his life-changing growth spurt. The confident teenager with a noticeable unibrow was by far the best player on the court, Hale recalled during an interview in March when the Mavericks were in town to play the Bulls. The coach witnessed Davis’ perimeter shooting ability, promising handle and elite trash talk.
“Shorty got potential. He’s nice,” Hale said to himself, not referring to Davis’ height, but using a Chicago-based nickname that applies to all, no matter what age or size.
From that moment, Hale knew he’d take the job. As Perspective’s coach, he challenged Davis to not only perfect his shot, but also expand his game as a playmaker and defender. Hale sought to transform Davis from an under-the-radar late bloomer into a highly touted Division I basketball prospect.
Davis’ versatile two-way skills blossomed once he shot up to 6-7 in the summer between his sophomore and junior year. He reached 6-10 by the time he was a senior. All of a sudden, the NBA wasn’t a far-fetched dream anymore.
With the newfound height came a position change to power forward and the expectation to become a force on the defensive end.
One of Hale’s tactics to get Davis to use his wide range of skills was to restrict him from taking jump shots during scrimmages. He could drive the ball, but his teammates had the freedom to do whatever they wanted on the court.
“That ain’t basketball,” Davis griped to his new coach. “They know what I’m going to do.”
What Davis didn’t realize, Hale said, was that he was preparing him to be the No. 1 priority on opposing team’s scouting reports.
Davis dominated as a senior, averaging 32.0 points, 22 rebounds and a staggering 7.0 blocks per game against players who were often a foot shorter. It was also a time when the traditional big man camped out in the paint, waiting for smaller guards and forwards to test their shot-blocking abilities.
“It was easy,” Davis said. “I didn’t have to think. I was playing against guys who were 5-6. When I got to college, it was demanded.”
College also demanded he accept a noticeable trait he took pains to remove in high school: the strip of fuzzy hair above his nose and between his dark brown eyes. Throughout his lone season at Kentucky, fans embraced their superstar’s signature feature and coined his new nickname: “The Brow.”
“I look at it like it’s his superpower,” Hale said with a laugh. “I feel like if he cuts it off, he might go back to being 6-2 or something.”
Team USA beginnings
Two weeks after walking across the draft stage to shake David Stern’s hand as the Pelicans’ No. 1 pick of the 2012 NBA draft, Davis found himself inside a gymnasium looking up – figuratively – at his new teammates, all future members of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.
Davis was a late addition to the U.S. senior men’s national team for the London Olympics, an experience that helped mold him into one of the most dynamic power forwards in the history of the league.
“That was probably the key moment of my career because I was able to learn from all of those guys,” Davis said.
Those guys included Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony and former Maverick Tyson Chandler, the only true center on the roster.
Chandler remembers Davis boasting an aura of confidence far beyond his 19 years while also being a sponge who was eager to learn.
“I was shocked at his shot-blocking ability,” Chandler told The News. “He could do both, but he wouldn’t grab a blocked shot at its peak. He would get shots and time them out of guys hands as they were trying to shoot it. That’s a unique skill that he possesses naturally.”
Davis played sparingly, but Team USA went undefeated and won the gold medal match over Spain, the first of his three international gold medals with the 2014 FIBA World Cup and 2024 Paris Olympics.
“I think it just set the tone for his career,” James said at his locker after the Lakers beat the Mavericks on April 9. “Doing what he did and then being able to practice with us every day, ride the buses, ride the planes with us every day. We were blowing teams out and he got in and got his moments in the game. I think it was the perfect sendoff into his career and part of why he is who he is today.
“I think he learned so much from all of us. That’s why he’s top 75 of all-time, a Hall of Famer, champion. The accolades are out of this world. He’s a special talent and a better person.”
Who are the Mavs getting in Davis?
Most people know Davis for what he’s done on the basketball court, but few know the man away from it. Davis and his wife, Marlen, have been married since 2021 and have three children together. He has a twin sister, Antoinette, and an older sister, Lesha, who played basketball at Daley College. Their parents, Anthony Sr. and Erainer, raised them in the Englewood neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side.
He keeps his tight-knit circle close, with several members of it following him to Dallas, including cousin Keith Chamberlain, personal security guard Garrett “GP” Partman and Chattin Hill, who was the Lakers’ head strength and conditioning coach.
While relationships are important to Davis, they don’t happen overnight. When he requested a trade in 2019 after seven seasons in New Orleans, it took nearly six weeks as Lakers teammates for Davis to get comfortable with him, Dudley said.
“We had our battles as players. He didn’t like me at first,” said the Mavericks assistant, who has served as a bridge between Davis’ time in LA and Dallas.
“AD is a person that when he doesn’t know you early on, he don’t like you,” Dudley said. “You gotta work your way into earning his trust. … But once AD opens up, he’s goofy, fun-loving, selfless and very giving. Paying for dinners, taking people out, trying to do team camaraderie, which he’s already done here in Dallas.”
Davis had relationships with several members of the organization, including Irving, Thompson and Spencer Dinwiddie, who spent part of the 2023-24 season with the Lakers. To learn more about his newer teammates, Davis had to be intentional about creating spaces to get to know one another off the court.
The night before the Mavericks’ Play-In Tournament game against the Kings, Davis organized a dinner and watch party for the 7-8 matchup between the Golden State Warriors and Memphis Grizzlies, who lost that game and had to beat Dallas to earn a date with the top-seeded Oklahoma City Thunder.
That chance of making the playoffs, however slim, is why Davis returned to the court from the left adductor strain he suffered in his Dallas debut. It’s why he scored 40 points against the Grizzlies in an elimination game, playing in visible pain after he was kneed in the calf by Zach Edey. Harrison said Davis will not need offseason surgery to address the adductor strain.
“Anthony’s mindset is, if I can walk and my arms work, I can play,” said Hale, his high school coach.
And when he does play, Davis is one of the most dominant forces in the NBA. When he doesn’t, it severely decreases his team’s chances to be successful.
Davis played in a career-high 76 games last season, but that number dropped to 51 this year. He missed 18 games after showing Mavericks fans a glimpse of Harrison’s vision on Feb. 8, when he had 26 points with 13 rebounds and seven assists in 2.5 quarters. Those numbers are close to his career averages of 24.1 points, 10.7 rebounds and 2.3 blocks per game.
The experience Davis has gained over the past 13 years in the NBA has shaped his perspective on how to process missing time because of injuries.
“Don’t get it wrong. I’ve had breakdowns. At the end of the day, you still have to be human,” Davis said.
“Perfect example. When I got injured [Feb. 8], when they told me that first day, I was like, God, damn. But after that, it was like, the situation is not going to change regardless. You can dwell on it for two weeks and the situation is still gonna be there. Why dwell on it for two weeks when we can get right to a solution within 24 hours? For me, it’s how can I keep moving forward and continue to be better?”
The challenge for Davis in Dallas is clear: Stay on the court and win a championship. Everything about his journey says he’ll try his best.
“Some people play this game because they make a lot of money. Some people play this game because they care, which makes them a lot of money. AD is a guy that cares,” Rich Paul, Davis’ agent, told The News before his first game in Dallas. “He’s bringing all that growth and maturation with him. I think Dallas is actually getting the best AD.”
X/Twitter: @MikeACurtis2
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