For watch fans, the NBA is the league for you. As of the 2022–23 season, the average NBA player makes a huge $9.6 million a year. This makes NBA players some of the highest-paid sports in the world.

As a result? They have a lot of extra money that they can use to buy cool watches. There’s a strong tradition of wearing crazy and expensive clothes to games (there’s a reason we call people who flex hard “ballers”), so it’s a watch collector’s dream.

The things that NBA stars like are usually the ones that are bigger and stand out more. So, it was a big surprise when one of the NBA’s biggest stars, Anthony Davis, wore a very small and understated watch last week.

Last week, “The Brow” was seen wearing a 37mm Audemars Piguet Royal Oak with an ice-blue dial to the first round 3 game of the 2023 NBA Playoffs Western Conference Finals against the Denver Nuggets. Yes, it is 37mm.

There are a lot of different case widths for the Royal Oak, but the OG has a 39mm case, which is pretty small these days (in fact, the Royal Oak was called the “Jumbo” when it first came out in 1972 because 39mm was such a big case size).

That’s all I have to say about 37mm being fairly small… For a man of average size. Davis isn’t like most guys, though. Davis is a real beast. He is 2.08 meters tall and has wings that are 2.27 meters wide. So why does he have on such a tiny watch?

It’s not like he had to buy a big watch to make his AD happy or anything. Lots of expensive watches, mostly from Audemars Piguet, are bought by Davis. It was a choice to get this small watch.

There are other big NBA stars who like small watches besides Davis. In fact, Davis is not even the only Laker who does this.

LeBron James has what is likely the best and most expensive watch collection in the NBA. He has also been seen wearing smaller watches, like this Rolex Oyster Perpetual 36 “Coral Red” (ref. 126000-0007) that he bought in 2020.

It’s an interesting pattern. Cases for watches have been getting bigger for years now. At the moment, 42mm seems to be the standard case size for men’s watches. Brands that make big watches, like Breitling, IWC Schaffhausen, Panerai, and even Audemars Piguet with their Royal Oak Offshore and Concept, have never been more popular.

There have, however, been predictions for a long time that case sizes will go back down. Because the NBA has always been on the cutting edge of fashion, that might finally catch on for good. Let us hope.