Brevin Knight, one of the Grizzlies’ commentators, insinuated that Deyonta Davis has effort issues and that’s why he’s not as good as it seems like he should be. All I have to say about that is, Davis fits the profile of somebody who would have effort issues. He’s big, which means that things have come relatively easy to him up to this point. He’s got those slacker dreads, which indicate to me that he’s a chill dude who likes to chill out with some kush every once in a while. He dropped pretty far in the draft, which means teams were scared away by something (“something” being his effort issues, duh). He plays for a garbage team that is almost never in position to actually win a game, which probably doesn’t help his motivation to play well.
Maybe the biggest contributor to his alleged effort deficiency is that he has to share a locker room with Chandler Parsons, who is getting paid a gigantic amount of money to mostly sit around and not do much. Davis sees Parsons collecting a check just for having some pretty decent seasons once upon a time, and he thinks to himself, “I too should be able to collect checks while not doing much.” Hence the lack of intensity that he sometimes (allegedly) displays.
Keep in mind that this is all baseless speculation because I certainly will not subject myself to enough Grizzlies games to determine conclusively whether or not Deyonta Davis plays with hustle.