Lakers honor Anthony Davis with tribute video in return to LA

In his return to Los Angeles, the Lakers honored Anthony Davis with a tribute video during the first quarter.

Many fans envisioned Anthony Davis’ career finishing out with the Lakers, including AD himself. In almost every timeline, he would play out his career in Southern California before having his jersey raised to the rafters.

However, in this timeline, Davis did not spend the remainder of his career donning purple and gold, instead being dealt to the Mavericks in the shocking Luka Dončić trade. It left everyone stunned, again including AD as well.

Tuesday, though, offered a bit of closure as Davis returned to Crypto.com Arena for the first time. While he wasn’t playing due to injury, he was still honored by the team during the first quarter with a tribute video.

While landing Luka is a deal everyone makes, it’s still an emotional goodbye for Lakers fans to AD. The big man was an integral part of winning an exceptionally meaningful title in 2020 and had become integrated with the franchise and the LA community as a whole.

In fact, that was clear before the game when AD was going through warm-ups on the court while fans marveled at the fact he’s a Mavs player now.

At his pregame presser, Lakers head coach JJ Redick spoke about AD returning and the relationship they had built in just a few months.

“I’ll start with just the fact that I miss being around him every day,” Redick said. “He’s a fantastic human being, wonderful teammate. For a guy who’s a superstar, who’s been in the Olympics and won the finals, is All-NBA, probably had a decent amount of skepticism with a coach who’s never coached before – a former podcaster, if you will – for him to just accept me and be open to a relationship and my coaching was big time. It speaks a lot to who he is as a person.

“You certainly miss him as a player, but…he’s just a pleasure to be around every day.”

It’ll be something that takes quite a while to get used to. The unexpected nature of the trade means the wounds were pretty large. Everyone involved, from fans to coaches to players, still isn’t completely used to this new normal.

Over time, they’ll heal for everyone involved, but it certainly is something that is going to take quite a while to get used to.

You can follow Jacob on Twitter at @JacobRude or on Bluesky at @jacobrude.bsky.social.