Many league followers were surprised when 19-year-old Anthony Davis weighed in at 222 pounds several months before his inaugural NBA campaign, but not for the reason you expect. The 2012 NCAA National Player of the Year was skin and bones during his lone season at Kentucky, a one-man wrecking crew of spindly arms, toothpick legs, and a barely-there waist. It wouldn’t have shocking if Davis arrived at the pre-draft combine a shade below 210 pounds – that’s how skinny he appeared in college. But he weighed well above that mark instead, a wildly encouraging sign of future mass and overall growth to come.
Three years later, not even that bright-eyed optimism of Davis’ eventual physical peak is proving accurate. He’s already the most athletic interior player in basketball, and is beginning to supplement that crazy blend of explosion and coordination with similarly impressive strength.
According to Pelicans.com, Davis is up 12 pounds from his 2014-15 playing weight to 253 pounds – and has done so while maintaining his normal 10 percent body fat. How’d he do it? We’ll let New Orleans’ strength and conditioning coach, Jason Sumerlin, explain.
“Our first phase was portion control,” said Sumerlin, taking over for Carlos Daniel, who left to further his education in the training field. “I wanted Anthony to eat more than he does, actually, because that’s the only way to gain weight. You have to get more protein, more calories. He’s never going to cut out pizza, but I finally got him to eat seafood, for the first time ever. He had salmon. He also has a chef now, so he’s become more adventurous when it comes to food and his diet. Changing his diet is a huge thing and probably half the battle.”
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“He has been lifting consistently, doing all the small things perfectly and efficiently,” Sumerlin said of Davis’ regimen. “We are more consistent in his lifts and his corrective exercises. He’s lifted a lot more weight – he’s stronger than he’s ever been.”
Davis, you may remember, was arguably the top player in basketball last season. He led the Pelicans’ franchise to its first playoff berth since 2011; was named All-NBA First Team and finished fifth in MVP voting; and became the youngest player ever to post a player efficiency rating of 30 or higher.
The Brow is already one of the several best players on the planet, basically, and has only begun to scratch the surface of his potential. Considering his natural career evolution and the appointment of offensive guru Alvin Gentry as New Orleans’ head coach, it was inevitable that he would take another step forward in 2015-16 – the question was just how big it would be.
And if Davis’ awesome gains in weight and strength are any indication, it will be even larger than his biggest proponents originally anticipated.
[Via Pelicans.com]
