Anthony Davis found out he got traded to the Lakers on Instagram and picked his new jersey number on 2K, proving he’s a peak millennial superstar

One of the downsides of trading away all the young players on the Lakers roster for Anthony Davis was that the team lost some of its youthful energy. The young core always had a good time roasting each other on social media, to the point that they even needed to be reprimanded once by the higher-ups. They played video games, played pranks on each other, and just generally acted like the kids they were.

The roster this year is mostly veteran players. That isn’t to say they can’t have a good time with each other, but they’re not at the age when they do dad jokes (looking at you, LeBron). It’s a different type of entertainment.

Luckily, the Lakers did get one young player back in Davis, and if we can learn anything from his opening press conference, he is the peak millennial superstar.

Firstly, Davis found out he got traded on Instagram.

“I was laying in bed watching a movie, and my agent called me,” Davis said. “And in the middle of a movie, I don’t really like to answer phones and texts, so I was like ‘eh, I’ll call him later.’ Then he called me again, so then it kind of hit, and I was like ‘wait, let me call him back.’ But when I called him back it went straight to voicemail, so me being a 26-year-old I went straight to Instagram to start looking, and that’s when I saw it.”

It’s nice that Davis acknowledges that going to Instagram is something a 26-year-old would do. Twitter seems like a better place for breaking news, but to each his own. Also, the part that really gets me is that Davis can’t remember the name of the movie he was watching, and it also doesn’t seem to faze him that he can’t remember it. I suppose being traded is what he remembers from that afternoon, but glossing over that detail goes hand in hand with Davis’ youthful vibe.

Davis furthered his millennial credibility by going to NBA 2K to pick out his jersey number. As was reported Friday, Nike told Davis and LeBron James that they couldn’t switch numbers this close to the start of the season, so Davis had to go back to the drawing board to figure out his jersey number for this season, and he turned to everyone’s favorite NBA videogame to visualize his available options.

“That was pretty hurtful, to be honest,” Davis said of being denied No. 23. “They sent me a list of numbers and I didn’t know which to choose, none of them looked right, so I went on 2K and threw some numbers on.... The first number I wore was No. 3, and I put another picture on Instagram today of me wearing that number, so when I saw the number was available, I kind of just wanted to take it all the way back to where it first started and put the number back on.”

That number was worn by Josh Hart last season, and it appeared that Jared Dudley had designs on taking it this year, but that wasn’t really Davis’ concern if it was on the available list. In his defense, the Lakers have 1 1 retired numbers, so the available pool is slightly smaller than most teams anyway.

The Lakers are rightfully excited for what Davis will bring on the basketball court, and after an introductory press conference in which Davis demonstrated that he’s alternately funny, engaging and youthful, it’s an unexpected treat to learn that we’ll get to enjoy his personality off of it as well.

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