NBA Star Power Index: Anthony Davis 'center' of attention; Kevin Durant's snub least of Steph Curry's concerns

Also, Trae Young and Luka Doncic were traded for one another, and might soon be meeting up in the All-Star Game

Welcome back to the NBA Star Index -- a weekly gauge of the players who are most controlling the buzz around the league. Reminder: Inclusion on this list isn't necessarily a good thing. It simply means that you're capturing the NBA world's attention. Also, this is not a ranking. The players listed are in no particular order as it pertains to the buzz they're generating. This column will run every week through the end of the regular season.

Davis had a wild Tuesday night in the Lakers' win over the Grizzlies, posting 40 points and 20 rebounds while hitting an incredible 26 of 27 free throws -- in three quarters! For the trivia crowd, Davis joins Wilt Chamberlain as the only players in NBA history to put up at least 40 points and 20 rebounds with at least 25 made free throws -- a feat Wilt accomplished in his famous 100-point game. Also, Davis becomes the first Lakers player to put up a 40-20 night since Shaquille O'Neal did it in 2003. 

For the season, Davis is now averaging just under 29 points a game to go with 12.5 boards and three blocks. When Davis has played the five spot, and he and LeBron have been put in pick-and-roll without another big man clogging up the lane, they've been virtually unstoppable. 

See what a simple LeBron - AD Pick and roll can do Frank Vogel? 😂 pic.twitter.com/5LrmpKCBvk

— LakerVille (@Laker_Ville) October 26, 2019

But Davis' reticence to play the five spot on a consistent basis has been a story for his entire career, and Davis is still adamant that he prefers playing the four spot with another big man next to him to take on the more physical defensive matchups. 

Again, the problem is the Lakers' other bigs -- namely JaVale McGee and Dwight Howard -- can't shoot, which means they are hanging around in the paint and mucking up the would-be operating room for the LeBron-Davis pick-and-roll. It's a fine line the Lakers are going to have to walk. Frank Vogel says he envisions the Lakers playing Davis at the five in a lot of closing situations, but Davis has the ultimate power here if the Lakers start falling more and more in love with a lineup their newest star doesn't prefer. 

After all, Davis is a free agent next summer. If he doesn't like the way the Lakers are using him, he can just walk. The threat of that happening, no matter how unlikely, forces the Lakers to weigh Davis' personal interests nearly as much as they value what's best for the team in the short term. Because let's be honest: keeping Davis long term is what's REALLY best for the team.

Irving put up a 50 spot in his Nets debut, and through three games he's leading the league in scoring. But the Nets are 1-2. They lost a heartbreaker on opening night when Kyrie missed what would've been one of the most circus-act buzzer-beaters of all time. Small sample size, and Irving has been truly great, but the question still remains whether Kyrie, for all his individual brilliance, can be the best player on a great team. 

Plus, with Kyrie there's always the lingering story of his ever-changing mood, which hung so heavy over the Celtics' locker room last season and reportedly had the Nets concerned during a preseason trip to China when Kyrie, sort of, detached. The Nets have since refuted this report that there's any concern with Kyrie's attitude or mood swings or whatever you want to call it. Either way, it's a story. Kyrie has brought that on himself and his teams with his past actions. 

All of this said, Kyrie appears to be genuinely happy in Brooklyn. You can see it in his play, in his hug with his father after the Nets' first win of the season against the Knicks, when Kyrie scored 26 points and hit the go-ahead 3-pointer with 22 seconds left. 

@howaboutafresca @SwollenDome Kyrie rips the win away from the Knicks with the dagger! #WeGoHard pic.twitter.com/HAeVRjGnD9

— Antony Parker (@antmacene) October 26, 2019

Young exited Atlanta's game vs. Miami on Tuesday with a sprained ankle, but the X-rays reportedly came back negative, there will be no need for an MRI, and Young could return as soon as next week. Talk about a sigh of relief for the Hawks, who struggled to create any sort of consistent offense after Young went down against the Heat. 

Young has been off the charts to start the season, just behind Irving as the league's second-leading scorer at 34 at night heading into the Miami game (that number dips to 26.8 after just five points in his abbreviated showing Tuesday night). He became the first player in NBA history to total at least 38 points, nine assists and seven rebounds in each of his team's first two games to start the season. 

On the offensive end, the only thing Young struggled with during his rookie season, ironically, was the thing for which he was most known: shooting. So far this season, he's knocking down 50 percent of his shots from 3-point range. When his shot is going like that, he becomes so deadly. Teams are throwing doubles at him constantly, and you can already see the patience as he walks the line between passing out of traps and keeping his dribble alive. 

Hawks coach Lloyd Pierce says he talks to Young all the time about the "Nash" element of his game, which is to say keeping his dribble alive as he probes the paint and runs through multiple actions in the way Steve Nash did so masterfully for years. Young's long-range bombs are still a thing, but he's not settling for them this season as much as he's creating them on his own terms. His range is ridiculous. This shot went in:

Trae Young’s 38-point season debut includes casual 3-pointer from half-court logo https://t.co/CfekCnF3Ro pic.twitter.com/PEPt324iHy

— The Comeback NBA (@TheComebackNBA) October 25, 2019

Assuming this ankle thing really is a short-term injury, Young is going to be square in the middle of the All-Star conversation, and he could realistically have the Hawks, who won just 29 games a year ago, in the playoff race come March and April.

We tend to talk about big-name trades, in hindsight, through the lens of one team having gotten over on the other -- say, like the 76ers giving an extra first-round draft pick to the Celtics for the right to draft Markelle Fultz over Jayson Tatum. But the Trae Young-Luka Doncic trade looks like a huge win for both sides. We can say this for sure for Dallas' end, because Doncic is a flat-out superstar already. 

Through four games, Doncic is averaging 25 points, 8.8 rebounds, 6.8 assists and 2.3 steals a night. He's 20 years old. And even those numbers are skewed by an uncharacteristic 12-point effort vs. Denver on Tuesday -- a Dallas win by thy way. In four games, Doncic has a triple-double and he missed a second one by one assist. That makes nine triple-doubles for his career, which is more than both Magic Johnson and LeBron James had at the same age. 

Doncic is shooting just 28 percent from 3, but that's a small sample size and doesn't in any way reflect how comfortable he's looked from distance. He is getting to the rim. He looks quick and shifty with the ball. His handle is super tight at 6-foot-8. When he came over from Europe, he was a noted passer, but we didn't see that quite as much as his scoring during his rookie season. Now with a co-star in Kristaps Porzingis next to him, you're going to see a lot of feeds like this one:

Luka Doncic's pass out of this trap >>>>>>> pic.twitter.com/YDn7u0FYU2

— Nick Angstadt (@NickVanExit) October 26, 2019

LeBron wasn't panicking when the Lakers lost their opener to the Clippers, and since then they've won three straight. So far, LeBron has been true to his word that the Lakers are going to prioritize playing through Anthony Davis, settling into more of a floor-general role with a particular radar lock on getting the ball to A.D. There have been numerous possessions where LeBron has just trusted Davis to be bigger and better than his defenders and throw him passes like this:

LeBron ➡️ AD

From HALF COURT 😲 pic.twitter.com/z12dQabIFd

— ESPN (@espn) October 30, 2019

That's nothing more than a quarterback knowing his receiver is bigger and stronger than the guy covering him, and just giving him an opportunity to make a play despite no clear window in which to throw the ball. These two are devastating together; it's just a matter if the Lakers' supporting players can shoot good enough and play versatile enough defense to compete for a championship. Getting Kyle Kuzma back will be a big boost.  

LeBron is still averaging 23 points a night without breaking a sweat, and you fully expect that number to eventually rise to 26 or 27 by the end of the season. The assist numbers are really climbing. Through Wednesday, LeBron is averaging 9.5 dimes a game, which would be a career high if sustained. In the Lakers' win over Memphis on Tuesday, LeBron scored 23 points on just 15 shots and only had to play 28 minutes. That is a dream for the Lakers, whose No. 1 priority is keeping LeBron and Anthony Davis healthy and as fresh as possible for the postseason.

Durant isn't even playing this season and somehow he's still making waves. First he got into a very interesting back and forth with my old CBS colleague, Matt Moore, on Twitter about the virtues of mid-range shooting and the practical realities of a superstar playing to the tune of his instincts rather than analytical data. Durant is so great, and so smart about the game, and listening to him talk about these things from a gut level is fascinating.

Durant also went on Serge Ibaka's show "How Hungry are You?" and ate part of a snake. Over this fine meal of serpentine, Durant told Ibaka that he "for sure" believes the Warriors would've beaten the Raptors in the Finals had he been healthy, and he also went on to proclaim Stephen Curry a better player than Russell Westbrook. Neither of these statements would qualify as controversial. 

But then Durant went on the "Knuckleheads" podcast with Darius Miles and Quentin Richardson, where he was asked to name his all-time starting five comprised of guys he'd played with at some point in his career, and somehow, Curry DID NOT make that cut. 

KD names his all-time starting 5 out of all the players he played with:

Kyrie Irving
James Harden
Kevin Durant
Draymond Green
Serge Ibaka

“We can switch everything on D, we got all-world scorers..that’s a perfect team”

(🎥 @PlayersTribune / Knuckleheads) pic.twitter.com/dpPIboHPjR

— NBA Central (@TheNBACentral) October 24, 2019

Seriously, where do we even start with this? Kevin Durant has won two titles with Curry's help and zero titles with any of those other guys besides Green, who is also a Curry beneficiary, and somehow Curry doesn't make Durant's starting five? There is no world, flat or otherwise, in which Kyrie Irving has been a better basketball player than Curry, nor a better teammate, and for all James Harden's individual success, he hasn't had Curry's career either. 

It's not to say there aren't a lot of guys in the league who might secretly choose Kyrie and/or Harden over Curry, independent of the respective team dynamics a lot of people believe have favored Curry; secretly I think there are a lot of guys who kind of think Curry is overrated. But this isn't just anyone snubbing Curry. This is Durant. This is about the optics. This is about blatantly disrespecting a teammate that helped you do something you've never been able to do on your own. 

Durant will tell you that when people spent years pitting him and Curry against one another it was ridiculous, and in a lot of ways it was, but how can anyone think he doesn't have a bone to pick with all the attention Curry got when he doesn't pick the only co-star teammate to ever help him win a title as one of his all-time starting-five teammates? It seems like a silly comment on some silly podcast that Durant will say everyone is reading way too much into, but come on. These guys were one of the best duos in history. This would be like LeBron James naming his all-time teammate starting five and NOT picking Dwyane Wade. It would never happen. This is blatant shade being thrown by Durant, even though he'll laugh at that suggestion.

In addition to being snubbed by Durant, Curry cracks the Star Index for all the wrong reasons. The Warriors got off to a nightmarish start, dropping their first two games of the season to the Clippers and Thunder by a combined 47 points, and somehow the beatings they took looked even worse than that number would indicate. Golden State bounced back with a win over New Orleans, which now sits at 0-4 itself, but this Golden State situation looks pretty bad -- at least until Kevin Looney, Willie Cauley-Stein and Alec Burks get into the mix and provide some semblance of support. 

For his part, Curry hasn't been great, most of which is a product of simply having to make too much happen with limited resources to take even a smidge of pressure off him. That said, we've seen LeBron carry subpar teams. Against OKC, Curry, for the first time in his career, finished with at least nine missed 3-pointers and eight turnovers. Not great. 

Curry has become, and will continue to be, the focal point of questions directed at Steve Kerr, who basically refuses to turn Curry loose as a super-high-usage, volume scorer in the same way the Rockets deploy James Harden. To a lesser degree, the Blazers do the same thing with Damian Lillard. It's pretty simple, really: This is our best player, we're going to give him the ball and let him make plays, and let your offense trickle down from the inevitable attention he draws. 

Kerr doesn't think the Warriors have the collective spacing for such an attack to work, and he has been very clear that individual-based offense is not something he cares for philosophically. On the contrary, Kerr wants everyone to be involved, everyone moving, everyone passing and cutting in a somewhat equal-opportunity operation, and he loves running Curry around off the ball for the sheer attention he draws. 

Problem is, Kevin Durant and Klay Thompson aren't around anymore to turn all those opportunities afforded by Curry's gravity into actual points. With these Warriors, there is no price to be paid for paying too much attention to Curry, who is now being doubled at every turn, even off the ball, which makes it difficult for him to come free off a screen to even receive a pass, let alone get a clean look at a shot. 

Plus, the Warriors aren't exactly filled with highly skilled, high-IQ passers these days. Make Curry give up the ball, and this is what's liable to happen in the process of trying to get it back to him:

Given these circumstances, it would certainly be tempting to just not take the ball out of Curry's hands in the first place. On the other hand, would these Warriors be any sort of real threat even with Curry going nuclear every night? You get the distinct impression that internally the Warriors' brass has already come to grips with this season being something of a transition year as they try to gear back up for next season with a healthy Klay Thompson. If that's the case, why run Curry into the ground just to finish with the seven- or eight-seed and get run in the first round?

Brown made headlines when the Celtics gave him a four-year, $115 million extension last week. It was a far cry from the four-year, $80 million offer the Celtics reportedly put on the table initially, and frankly, it's more money than Brown has proven to be worth to this point in his career. But the Celtics aren't paying Brown for the player he's been; they're paying him for the player they believe he can be, the player we've seen flashes of but now has to produce on a star level every night to justify that contract. 

So far, Brown has looked good for a Boston team off to a 2-1 start. He's averaging 17.3 points on 50 percent shooting and over 13 shots a game, which would all be career highs if sustained. He's been aggressive in a controlled way. Still an athletic, straight-line driver at heart, he's looked more controlled in certain cases, pulling possessions back out to initiate a pick-and-roll or even just move the ball where in the past he would've put his head down and tried to barrel through multiple defenders. Look here:

A pretty much non-existent playmaker in the past, he's made some really nice passes to start the year. Here's another one:

Even if he's only averaging two assists a game, you can see the emphasis on adding a playmaking element to his game, which would be a huge evolution for him.

Walker got off to a shaky start in Boston and was visibly pressing in the opener against Philly, when he went 4 of 18 from the field. He got it rolling in some spurts against Toronto, and then, finally, fully clicked against the Knicks when he finished with 32 points -- and zero turnovers -- on 11 of 17 from the field, including 7 of 12 from deep. 

Walker finally looked like his old self once he got going in New York, dancing on defenders with some of the slickest and quickest handles in the league while draining pull-up 3s from all over, hitting from deep on three consecutive possessions at one point as it became the Kemba Walker Show. 

That Walker is finally on a team that's going to afford him the stage his talent deserves is something every NBA fan should be smiling about. He is an entertainer in the truest sense, but also one of the league's great competitors. He's going to put on a lot of shows this season, as he's done in the past, but now a lot more people are going to see and appreciate them.