Los Angeles Lakers guard Austin Reaves made some serious noise in his second season in L.A., enough to earn himself a new contract and be on the Team USA FIBA World Cup roster. Starting out as a two-way contract and making this far in a short amount of time is nothing short of remarkable for Reaves.
Team USA kicks off FIBA play on Aug. 25, where a young, talented team tries to bring home gold. The team features rising stars such as Mikal Bridges, Anthony Edwards, Jaren Jackson Jr., Tyrese Haliburton and Paolo Banchero.
With Reaves experiencing international play for the first time and playing with new talent, he was asked who he was most excited to share the floor with. The answer was the 2016 No. 2 pick of the Lakers Brandon Ingram, via Yahoo Sports:
“I think Brandon Ingram is someone that’s just like, I don’t even know how tall he is, arms long as shit and just gets to his spot and he’s never rushed. Really [excited to play with’ everybody honestly, we’ve got such a talented team that you know the main thing for us is just to mesh it together and you know figure out how to play off one another. Kind of use each other to you know benefit each other. But, I’ll learn a little bit of something from everybody.”
Opportunities like FIBA allow for talented players to come together and learn how to play with and for one another. Players have traditionally spoken about how much they learn from their peers in scenarios like this, and that will likely be the case for Reaves, Ingram and the rest of the young USA squad.
This may be the youngest team that USA Basketball has had so far with the roster consisting of players with a couple years of experience in the NBA and little to none FIBA or international experience. It’ll be interesting to see how this team looks once the World Cup tips off in late August as well as seeing how Reaves performs, hopefully showing Lakers fans what to expect heading into next season.
Thomas Bryant calls Reaves a ‘skilled killer’
Former Laker Thomas Bryant recently had high praise for Reaves, calling him a ‘skilled killer’ after getting to see and play alongside him essentially every day before the trade deadline this past season.
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