Austin Reaves has been a huge part of the Los Angeles Lakers’ success during the 2025-26 season, but he and the team are still looking for some consistency as the regular season winds down.
The Lakers have the top-end talent to hang with any team, but a lack of competitive fire and defensive focus has resulted in ugly losses to the some of the NBA’s best teams. However, they flipped the narrative against the New York Knicks as they had arguably their most complete performance of the season.
Reaves and the rest of Los Angeles’ roster fought and scrapped for the entirety of the game on both sides of the floor and pulled off an impressive 110-97 victory. The guard finally broke out of his mini slump with a 25-point showing, but also was great as a secondary playmaker moving the basketball.
After the win, Reaves said the key to the win was the Lakers playing harder than the Knicks.
“Just thought we played hard, stuck to the the game plan and competed,” he said. “That’s what it came down to. I think we played harder than them and we set the tone early and had a really good third quarter.”
As far as his approach entering the matchup, Reaves kept it simple and said he wanted to enjoy playing basketball.
“Have fun. Woke up, early game, was tired when I got here and just told myself to have fun,” Reaves added. “I don’t feel like I’ve played bad, just haven’t made a lot of shots and feel like I’ve done a lot of other things well. But just continuing to play the game the right way and I feel like good will come with good.”
Outcompeting quality competition has been a huge issue for the Lakers this year as they have looked listless against some of the best teams. However, as Reaves noted they were the aggressors and matched the Knicks’ physicality and then some.
This win is a great building block game for the purple and gold and it’ll be interesting to see if they can maintain the same level of effort when they host the Minnesota Timberwolves on Tuesday.
Austin Reaves admits he and Lakers can’t stay frustrated at officials
One of the more underrated parts of the Lakers win against the Knicks is they didn’t spend as much time arguing with officials. Austin Reaves previously admitted that he and the rest of the roster can’t stay frustrated at officials and they made good on that declaration against the Knicks.
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