A couple of years ago, the NBA celebrated its 75th anniversary, and the Association marked the occasion by naming its 75 greatest players of all time.
One of the active players named to the list was the Los Angeles Lakers’ Anthony Davis. The selection was met with some criticism, especially since Davis had been injury-prone for much of his career.
He has played outstanding basketball so far in his team’s first-round playoff series against the Denver Nuggets. In Game 2, he was virtually unstoppable for a long stretch, and he is averaging 32 points on 61.9% shooting, 12.5 rebounds and 2.5 blocked shots a contest in this series.
Unfortunately, the Lakers trail in the series, 2-0, after their devastating loss on Monday when they blew a 20-point second-half lead. Former Nuggets head coach George Karl used it as an opportunity to imply that perhaps Davis didn’t deserve to be named one of the NBA’s 75 greatest players ever.
Nuggets fans, as u watch the final 2-3 games of this Lakers series, remember that the great Alex English wasn’t voted a top 75 NBA all time player but Anthony Davis was 😳😆
— George Karl (@CoachKarl22) April 23, 2024
English was a very good player in the 1980s, and he was almost a walking bucket for those Nuggets squads. But he didn’t excel in any other phase of the game. Thus it would be utterly foolish to claim he was a better player than Davis, who is an outstanding scorer, rebounder, shot-blocker and overall defender.