Anthony Davis is among the Lakers players who haven’t forgotten about the Nuggets’ taunts after they won the championship.
Denver swept LA in the Western Conference finals, and obviously went on to win the 2023 NBA Championship after defeating Miami in the Finals.
One incident in particular has stuck with Davis and when the Lakers play the Nuggets on opening night, expect there to be some hard feelings.
At the Nuggets championship parade, head coach Michael Malone was introduced to the crowd as the Lakers’ daddy.
“It’s very motivational,” Davis said, per Harrison Faigen. “I mean, obviously KCP [Kentavious Caldwell-Pope] is my guy so you kind of congratulate him, like ‘you got this one.’ But it was just a lot of like, the talking, and ‘the Lakers dad.’ There was just so much of that going on; it was like ‘All right, we get it, y’all won.’ But me and Bron had some conversations like, ‘We can’t wait.’”
The big man also says that he doesn’t want all the responsibility to be on LeBron’s shoulders this year and hopes he can play at an MVP level himself.
“We had enough to win, but it’s a lot of motivation,” Davis said. “All the talking that’s been going on this summer. We still have our core. Now that we have a full camp, we’ll be really good. A lot of teams forgot about [Christian] Wood, he’s prepared. I’m on myself after every game. Hopefully I’ll be in those [MVP] conversations. Helping the guys out, not leaving it all on LeBron.”
As well as adding another big man in Christian Wood to help take the load off AD, the Lakers added Gabe Vincent, Taurean Prince, Cam Reddish and Jaxson Hayes to the roster.
It will be interesting to see how they stack up, especially against recently bolstered teams in the East like the Celtics and the Bucks.
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