Playtime's Over

— -- THE SIXTH-GRADE girl with the fluttering ponytail is twirling nearly eight feet off the gym floor. Her eyes widen in equal parts terror and delight as Anthony Davis spins her through the air.

At last, Davis lowers her to the ground and is quickly engulfed by a gaggle of middle school girls, who bury the NBA's next iconic player in a group hug. One playfully tries to steal his shoe. Davis finally breaks free from their clutches, shrieking "Save me!" and collapses in a chair, chest heaving with laughter and fatigue.

"And to think he was actually a little grumpy when he got here," says a grinning Lindsey Mitchell, the Pelicans' staffer charged with wrangling the players for the event.

Moments later, Davis is leading the kids in a chant of "Au-stin! Au-stin!" until Pelicans guard Austin Rivers complies with a dunk. Next, he's teaching two boys a finger-wagging handshake. Davis delays a round of photos because he's busy sneaking down the hall, popping his head into classrooms. He even takes time to ponder life's great questions: "When a baby is born, is he already 9 months old?" he asks a couple of team employees. "Think about it."

It is easy to grow cynical after viewing yet another NBA Cares commercial, or to snicker as a team unveils its latest alternate-color jersey -- wow, red! -- at a local school, as the Pelicans have done on this afternoon in late September. But as Davis interacts with the kids, it suddenly resonates he is closer in age to the students at St. Catherine of Siena than to John Salmons, his 34-year-old teammate.

"I'm only 21," Davis says. "I still have that inner child in me. I think that will be there for life. You don't want to grow up too fast."

Peter Pan complex or not, as Davis enters his third season in the NBA, his age and his franchise's irrelevance will no longer shield him from sky-high expectations. Not after a season in which he averaged 20.8 points and 10.0 rebounds, led the league in blocks with 2.8 per contest and earned his first All-Star selection. Not after a summer in which he anchored Team USA en route to the gold medal at the FIBA World Cup. Not with an exceptional set of abilities that make those accomplishments seem like nothing more than an amuse-bouche. There is a palpable sense that Davis is about to serve up a nine-course tasting menu of awesome.

The Mag recently polled one representative from all 30 teams -- either a coach, executive or scout -- and asked those reps to choose the NBA's third-best player behind LeBron James and Kevin Durant. Davis scored the most votes with 10, one more than Chris Paul. Many respondents stressed, though, that if queried at the end of this season, Davis would win in a landslide. And if the voters had been asked to build around a player for the next decade, Davis might have been a unanimous choice.

That's how high the bar is for Davis this season: If he doesn't butt his way into the conversation with LeBron and KD, there will be disappointment, from NBA front offices to Internet message boards to the Twittersphere. As unfair as it may be, popular opinion demands linear progress. And Davis will be expected not only to raise his own game, but also to lift up his team, which has won just 61 games over the past two seasons. In the loaded Western Conference, that task will be nearly impossible: The best-case scenario for New Orleans likely ends with a low playoff seed and a first-round exit.

The strength of the Pelicans' opponents is beyond Davis' control, as is the quality of his teammates. Even if Davis excels personally but the team falters, judgment could still be swift and severe. Just ask Kevin Love how that goes. History shows that the basketball world does not often take excuses. As one GM says, "He needs to be able to transform his team."

Fair or not, that's a tremendous amount of pressure for a 21-year-old. So how will he handle it?