Recently, Anthony Davis was seen on a video clip admitting he hadn’t shot a basketball since April 5, the last regular-season game he played in.
It caused a stir among some Los Angeles Lakers fans, who accused Davis of being lazy and not caring about his craft.
However, new head coach Darvin Ham sees nothing wrong with the superstar big man going two months without shooting a basketball, and he explained why while on “The Rich Eisen Show.”
“I feel the exact opposite. Being a guy that played eight years in the league and had deep playoff runs with teams, there’s that time at the end of the year that you have to take care of your body. All that pounding, the jumping, the running, especially when you’ve dealt with an array of injuries like Anthony has, you have to take time for your body, focus on your body and that’s what he’s doing. Picking up a basketball, that usually happens in the middle of summer. You may do some spot shooting or whatever but in terms of the pounding and the hard workouts and the grueling workouts on the court, that’s usually pushed back toward the middle of the summer. That’s just a general NBA player’s principle just to get that time to get your body back feeling well, to get your body stronger in different areas, to strengthen your mobility or agility. The court will come later. You have to have a functional body in order to be able to improve your game on the court.”
Just days later, famed shooting coach Chris Matthews, a.k.a Lethal Shooter, posted on Twitter that he had put in a good workout session with Davis, which served as proof that apparently the big man had gotten back in the lab after letting his body rest and heal.
Davis sprained his MCL in December and sprained his foot in February. After his second injury, he appeared in only three contests in April.
During those contests, his foot appeared to be bothering him, but Davis, as he often does, wanted to play through the pain and be there for his team.
