Anthony Davis' Hard Work Pays Off

 

We all love Anthony Davis, if he was President, his satisfaction rate would be hovering near 100% in this state (minus the Card fans). No surprise, that’s what a National Championship and a National Player of the Year award will do for you. But it looks like those in the Big Blue Easy are starting to adopt a similar view of the #1 Draft Pick as well. The Times-Picayune in New Orleans published a feature article on Davis yesterday describing the phenom’s meteoric rise to stardom after receiving little to no attention prior to the summer before his senior season. 

One of the funniest anecdotes from the article is that when Illinois High School basketball expert Daniel Poneman checked out Davis’ 8th grade AAU team and judged that the 5-9 130lb, goggle-wearing 6th man named Anthony Davis was the 30th best 8th grader in the STATE OF ILLINOIS. Just think about that, 6 years ago, a person qualified to judge statewide talent believed there were 29 other players in the state alone better than Anthony Davis in his class. After Anthony famously shot up to 6-9 by his Junior season, Poneman recalled the next time he saw him play, 3 years after that day in Davis’ 8th grade year:

“Flash forward about three years and I get a couple of calls. ‘There’s this really tall kid that Meanstreets has. I don’t know if he’s good, but you should check him out.’ They said his name was Anthony Davis. At the time, I didn’t make the connection that it was the same Anthony Davis. I hadn’t seen him in three years.”

Now nearly a foot taller, still slim, but with long arms that were swatting away shots and creating fast breaks which complemented a silky long-range shooting touch, Davis left Poneman slack-jawed.

The article also goes in-depth into Anthony’s upbringing, which includes his time at the start-up Prospectives Charter School in Chicago, which doesn’t even have a home court to play basketball on, but was chosen as the high school for the Davis kids based on academic and disciplinary reputation.

The rest of the article is too deep in substance to cover every major part right here, but it goes on to cover other topics, including the beginning of his relationship with Coach Calipari, and his transition to the NBA after a phenomenal freshman season at Kentucky. It also gives you the opportunity to view the video that was shot during Davis’ junior season which jump started his now amazing career, which you can see below: