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.

Because of this? They can buy cool watches with all the extra cash they have. As a custom, people wear crazy, expensive clothes to games (that’s why we call people who flex hard “ballers”). This is a watch collector’s dream.

Most of the time, NBA stars like things that are bigger and stand out more. Antony Davis, one of the biggest names in the NBA, wore a very small and simple watch last week, which caught a lot of people off guard.

An ice-blue Audemars Piguet Royal Oak with a 37mm case was worn by “The Brow” to the first round 3 game of the 2023 NBA Playoffs Western Conference Finals against the Denver Nuggets last week. It is 37mm, yes.

There are a lot of different case sizes for the Royal Oak. The OG has a 39mm case, which is pretty small these days. When it first came out in 1972, the Royal Oak was called the “Jumbo” because the 39mm case was so big.

I think that’s all I have to say about 37mm being pretty small… This is for a guy of average size. Davis is different from most guys, though. Davis is a monster. He stands 2.08 meters tall and has wings that are 2.27 meters wide. So why does he wear such a tiny watch?

He didn’t have to buy a fancy watch to please his AD or anything. Davis buys a lot of expensive watches, mostly from Audemars Piguet. Getting this small watch was an option.

Davis isn’t the only big NBA star who likes small watches. Davis isn’t even the only Laker who does this.

LeBron James may have the best and most expensive collection of watches in the NBA. Bigger watches, like this Rolex Oyster Perpetual 36 “Coral Red” (ref. 126000-0007) that he got in 2020, have also been seen on him.

It’s an interesting graph. For many years now, watch cases have been getting bigger. The case size for most men’s watches right now seems to be 42mm. There have never been more fans of big watch brands like Audemars Piguet with the Royal Oak Offshore and Concept and Breitling, IWC Schaffhausen, and Panerai.

For a long time, though, people have said that case sizes will go back down. That might finally catch on for good since the NBA has always been on the cutting edge of style. Let’s have hope.