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Anthony Davis has racked up a healthy amount of accolades over the course of his seven-year career, but the Los Angeles Lakers All-Star has never won one of the five awards given out to players at the end of the NBA regular season.
In 2013, Davis came second in Rookie of the Year voting to Damian Lillard, who won the award by a unanimous vote. Then, in 2018, Davis finished third in both Most Valuable Player voting and Defensive Player of the Year voting.
This season with the Lakers, Davis is expected to be in the running for at least one of the regular season awards, but he has is eyes on a bigger prize. During an interview with Brian Windhorst of ESPN, Davis said that all of the individual awards he can win this season are secondary to the Larry O’Brien Trophy:
“I’m trying to win much more than an MVP, man,” Davis said, playing down the notion. “It’s early in the season, obviously; if the MVP comes, it comes. If the Defensive Player of the Year comes, it comes. But the entire team’s main goal is to win a championship and we’re trying to just stay in the moment right now.”
Unlike all of the other aforementioned awards, Davis has never been close to winning an NBA championship. The closest he came during his seven years with the New Orleans Pelicans was the Western Conference Semifinals.
While a lot can change between now and when the NBA Playoffs start on April 19, 2020, LeBron James, Davis and the Lakers are expected to be one of the final teams standing in the Western Conference, which is more than any of the Pelicans teams Davis was on could have said.
As long as Davis takes care of his body and buys into his role alongside James, there’s no reason to believe he won’t at least have a chance to shake the champagne bottles in the locker room next June.
For more Lakers talk, subscribe to the Silver Screen and Roll podcast feed on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher or Google Podcasts. You can follow this author on Twitter at @RadRivas.