Before his injury, Davis had a PER of 28.4 and 19.6 ppg. Layne Murdoch/NBAE/Getty Images

Anthony Davis is a virtuoso leaper -- like a hyperactive man on pogo-stick stilts. But no one could have anticipated the leap he's made this year. Through 15 games before breaking his hand on Dec. 1, Davis was second in the NBA in Player Efficiency Rating while averaging 19.6 points, 10.6 boards and a league-leading 3.9 blocks a game. We sat him down to find out why this Pelican is suddenly flying so high.

Chris Broussard: A few people close to the team were telling me you're like a different person this year. Not just as a player but off the court as well.

Anthony Davis: Yeah, I liked how my first year went, but at the same time, I didn't like how it went. A lot of injuries. Didn't play as many games as I wanted to. Wasn't very active in the community. Just wasn't being that person everybody expected me to be.

Broussard: Why?

Davis: The injuries held me back a little. But I don't think I was as confident. Being out there as a rookie going against these 4's -- Pau Gasol, Zach Randolph, Serge Ibaka, David West. It was like, Man, these guys are nice! They can score. They can kill you. And I just wasn't strong enough. They'd pound me in the post and score like three times, and I was just like, Man, I can't stop them. That would mess with my mind, so I'd try to come down and do something uncharacteristic and turn it over or take a bad shot. I felt the pressure. I heard everybody saying, "Oh, he's a bust. He's not even in the race for rookie of the year." I was like, Man, why am I doing everything wrong?

Broussard: So how'd you build that confidence entering this season?

Davis: This offseason, in the Team USA game, I started attacking and seeing my shot fall, started hearing positive things instead of the negatives I heard last year. I had to realize I've been playing this game since I was 3 years old. Nothing's changed. Coach Monty tells me all the time, "You can be a great player in this league." He believes in me, so I had to believe in myself.

Broussard: When Monty says you can be a great player, does he say how great? Like, "You can be as good as Tim Duncan"?

Davis: He says I have some of the same characteristics as Tim. But at the same time he tells me, "You're not there yet. You have to keep working." He told me that when Tim was a rookie going against David Robinson in practice, they had to black out the windows because Tim was just destroying him. His first year. So Monty tells me every time I get the ball I have to be willing to score. That's what he's trying to embed in my brain, and I'm starting to pick it up now.

Broussard: When you played against Tim last year, did you guard him enough to get a sense of how tough it is? I mean, you're obviously more athletic than he is at this point, and you may have thought you could get away with this and that against him, but ...

Davis: It didn't happen. Anything I thought I could do against him didn't happen. I'll never forget ... I mean, everybody knows his moves; he catches it off the block like Karl Malone, faces up, bank shot. So he caught it against me and faced up, and I'm like, I know the bank shot's coming. But he just lulled me to sleep and went right over me. I was like, Gosh, I knew that was coming.